jwilzewske: New Music, Summer Picaresque

Acoustic Locator Array, New ‘War Tubas’, Japan, Summer 1930

CMT: So I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt that John Toole’s classic, Confederacy of Dunces, is unreadable. A friend loved the book, but the very fact that he loved it annoyed me tremendously. The book is so unmitigatedly self-conscious! How could anyone love that book? It’s reassuring to know that you really really didn’t like it, for the same aesthetic reason that I find the book objectionable!

DSM: I think the same phenomenon happens with some musical compositions. They’re excessively self-aware, almost as though the composer thinks the work has to be weird and depressing to be considered serious ‘new music’.

CMT: But then, even with such music, if you live with the music for awhile, it often grows on you. Give it three or four listens. Give it the benefit of the doubt. The bits that, on first impression, seemed contrived or self-referential turn out not to be so calculating or stiff after all. True, the music may never ascend to become popular or “In”, but at least its merits do come into focus with repeated listenings. The composer’s conceits and methods do, when you reflect on the piece, deliver something honest and valid. You just were unable to appreciate it properly on the first hearing.

DSM: Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina and other of his tintinnabulations and iterative compositions were like that for me. But there’s nothing that intrigues me quite as much in music as a fractured analogy, a piece of music that tries to do something emulating another type of art. It is, of course, best if the construction is sound and the performance is convincing and feels ‘right’. But a big part of the fascination of new music for me is the flat-out novelty of the experience—the novelty of discovering for myself whether I like it or understand it. The novelty, if it’s a premier performance, of encountering terra incognita. There’s none of the ‘baggage’ of received wisdom and critical consensus, regarding what the significance and inner workings of the piece may be. The piece is simply a naked fact, something we absorb and react to—both extemporaneously at the time of the live performance, and afterward, usually after a lot of reflection—as you’re saying. That’s always exciting. Seldom comfortable, but always exciting!

CMT: In music and music theater, society only accepts literary Intellectualism if the music is “In,” highly popular and massively acclaimed by the mainstream media. If it’s valued by the broader community, then intellectualizing it is socially acceptable; if it’s not popularly valued, though, then intellectualizing about it out loud as we’re doing is totally unwelcome. In general, musical intellectualism isn’t valued in the U.S.—and it’s especially discouraged when it comes to new music. I don’t understand why intellectualizing about music is treated this way. Painting, sculpture, dance, other of the Arts are at least cut some ‘slack’ by the media and arbiters of public discourse.

T his is about a vacancy in culture, the absence of younger voices, perhaps the absence of a generation. The few—extremely few—intellectuals under the age of thirty-five, even forty-five, have seldom elicited comment. They are easy to miss, especially because their absence is longstanding. An intellectual generation has not suddenly vanished; it simply never appeared. And it is already too late—the generation is too old—to show up.”
— Russell Jacoby, 2000.

DSM: But I don’t think of what we’re discussing as a kind of ‘intellectualizing,’ really. We like to identify some reasons that support our opinions, yes. It wouldn’t be meaningful conversation if you couldn’t explain why you think as you do. But, beyond that, I think we have no prejudices as to what the nature and quality of ‘acceptable’ reasons are or should be—regardless whether it’s new music or otherwise. The whole point is to experience the music, preferably ‘live’, and to (re-)experience and enjoy discovering and refining our experience of the music together through conversations about it. That’s still why we do this, right?

CMT: Yes, of course it is. The dialogue’s the thing! Much in the way that chamber music itself wouldn’t be chamber music were it not for the dialogue among the parts, the various voices. But the summer season is upon us, and summer means that performances of ‘new music’ are harder to find than at other times of the year; our dialogue needs to be more actively cultivated, to keep it going. Summer’s the season for chamber music festivals, so there’re a lot of events to attend. But many of the festivals confine their programming to the classical canon. The Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, however, includes new music. The Banff Festival has its Canadian Commission Round, with a new quartet by Kelly-Marie Murphy that each competing ensemble will perform. And the Kuhmo Festival in Finland has considerable new music in its line-up.

DSM: And the Aspen Festival as well. The Ying Quartet will perform Tan Dun’s Eight Colors for String Quartet, Zhou Long’s Song of the Ch’in, and Chen Yi’s Shuo in Aspen on July 28. Emerson String Quartet performed Charles Ives’ String Quartet No. 2 and Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria there last Saturday. The Ottawa Festival has some Saariaho and other new works (Roddy Elias, Evan Ware, Victor Herbiet, Christian Elliot, Kevork Andonian, Evelyn Stroobach, and Jan Järvlepp – Aug 01) in their events this year.

CMT: Tanglewood has their new-music segment, too, from July 29 to August 3. Zwilich’s String Quartet No. 2; Eckhardt’s New work; Sollberger’s Advancing Moment; Harbison’s Abu Ghraib for Cello; Corigliano’s Troubadours – Variations for guitar and chamber orchestra; and Alvin Curran and others with Musica Electronica Viva on August 3.

DSM: I’m not sure I can be enthused to hear something entitled ‘Abu Ghraib for Cello’. That suggests to me something about as self-conscious as your John Toole book, Confederacy of Dunces. But Alvin Curran’s work, including his collection of solo piano pieces called Inner Cities, will be performed in Italy at the Santarcangelo International Festival of the Arts. That is both topical and honest and elegant. Daan Vandewalle will perform Curran’s Inner Cities No.13 on July 12 and 13. And Pierre-Yves Macé’s musique concrète piece, Passagenwerk, will be performed there on July 6.

CMT: How about MicroFest? MicroFest this summer has a program of Harry Partch’s music, performed on original Partch instruments, at California Plaza in L.A. If you like microtonality, this event is not to be missed.

DSM: You know, not all of Boulez’s music is ‘new’ in terms of its compositional techniques, neither is Terry Riley’s, nor Elliot Carter’s, say. And aleatoric music, “music of chance”, may transform the composer/performer relationship—but that isn’t inherently ‘new’ either, even though the improvisational aspect of it may be ‘new-as-of-this-minute’. Microtonal compositions likewise are not inherently ‘new’, even though microtonality may be far from conventional.

CMT: Okay! Eclectic and unconventional as our “newish” tastes may be, we’re not alone! So what new music do you want to go and hear? What rolicking musical adventures do you crave? When and where?

I n contemporary popular parlance, the attribution ‘picaresque’ refers to any rolicking adventure that delivers the travels and travails of a central character as he or she careens along the narrative way. ... To contend that a new ‘American picaresque’ has emerged ... is not only to call for an eclectic yet responsible use of the designation ‘picaresque’ but to propose an extended continuity in formal literary terms with other [narrative and dialogical] configurations that had their quite distinctive origins in other lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ... The picaresque [genre] [ —like new music— ] changes masks, shifts, dodges, proves resilient, survives … [despite the apparent lack of visible means of support!]”
— Rowland Sherrill, Road-Book America, 2005.

jwilzewske

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

New Music, Summer Picaresque

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