What Sticks?

            When I think about the parameters of this blog post, I immediately thought of the word “traditional.”  Something that stuck out to me is that the works we discussed, listened to, or interacted with were not “traditional” forms of music and sound as I know of it from a “classical” musical standpoint.  When I think of “traditional” French music, I think of Debussy looking at a Renoir painting and being inspired to write music, not necessarily to be inspired by music of the Javanese gamelan.  When I think of “traditional” atonal music, I see a twelve-tone row as discussed in music theory, not necessarily a dramatic work such as “Wozzeck” that reads just as easily as “La Boheme.”  When I think of “traditional” orchestral music, I think of structure and German men with long hair and beards waving their arms about a la Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, Wagner, von Karajan, even Strauss-both of them.   I don’t think of Copland or Shostakovich writing characterizations of political oppression.  When I think of “traditional” religious music, I don’t think about how different cultures have responded positively to Christianity, with the stories that one might hear about 15^th and 16^th century conquistadors invading Aztec or Incan cultures and deconstructing the area to make way for Christianity.  When I think of “pop” music, I think of modern music, and not music that was “popular” or “popular avant-garde” from the 1960s-1980s with Bob Dylan or Laurie Anderson.  When I think of “traditional,” I don’t come up with the sounds that John Cage seems to leave out.             

            So when I am asked to reflect on the most non-traditional thing that stands out in my mind, I think of Golijov’s “San Marcos Pasion.”  Being from a religious background and being involved in church music all my life and counting, I have found great joy in the hymnody of the Lutheran church and Protestant variations of old-time hymns.  I love four-part harmony.  I have found an enriching experience with hymns and church songs that require a congregation and a choir.  I have also been involved with the singing of the Bach St. John Passion as well as the Mozart Coronation Mass and William Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast.”  I have experienced only one world of religious culture in that regard.  With that, when I hear of “African Sanctus” for example, which reminds me a bit of “Different Trains,” I think of the power of the mysterious, and religion has been a source to contemplate the unexplainable and perhaps the unquestioned.  When the mass setting is presented, the styles of the Latin American cultures provide a different outlook on religious interpretation.  This is certainly reflected with the upbeat tempo at the beginning of the “Crucifixion,” and it leaves me to wonder what the meaning of the Passion means to different cultures that either hear of it or come to believe it.

            I had many thoughts go through my mind as I listened to Golijov’s work and as I heard examples from other composers.  I think of the history of music before the mass setting was being applied to its style.  I try to imagine what the music of Central Africa was like before 1900.  What would the music have felt like?  From where would people have drawn their inspiration?  How many people were really involved in music making?  From what I understand, Central American cultures incorporate music and dance together as an art form, and at a young age, so both are embedded in the culture.  If this is the case with many other African, Asian, and otherwise non-Western European cultures, what dance and music forms are inherent in their own society?  Do these musical styles represent some sort of rudimentary skill level that shows how well a young person may succeed in life?  Can music and dance mean that much?  I certainly thought so with the inclusion of dance in the San Marcos Pasion; there seemed to be the basic understanding that those who can sing and those who can make music can make art with their body.

            I think on these questions and think to myself about what my own culture.  What is inherent in my own life that I need to have in order to succeed?  Are those values or mores?  Is one more better than the other?  Is honesty better than cordial relations?  Is passion better than coordination?  Even as I write these questions, I think about the fact that I am comparing two different qualities that can go hand in hand.  What parts of music can actually work with dance, with visual art, or with poetry?  Rather than finding one quality over the other, I have thought about what someone from Latin American cultures respect and look for in good qualities of musicians or performers.  Perhaps the qualities that I want to portray musically don’t have to be so distinct; perhaps music goes great with every form of life.  I will think on this because I have listened to Golijov’s San Marcos Pasion and that will “stick with me,” thinking about how different people can respond to one phenomenon.

Library Presentation: Steve Reich’s “Different Trains.”

            Although the staggering and horrifying events that comprised the Holocaust are hardly forgettable in the learned scholar, the secondary signals and cultural symbols that have its imprint on history is equally as terrifying, and this can be found in the interpretation of Steve Reich’s minimalist music piece “Different Trains.”  As a late twentieth century composer who specializes in minimalist music, Reich uses techniques to create musical material and to emphasize sound effects, which include audio clips of Holocaust survivor stories and tapes of trains, whistles, and sirens.  The sounds created by the audio clips and tape loops are doubled in the live string quartet.  The sounds created from the natural inflection of the voices are reflected in a somber, driving, disjoint, atmosphere in the live musicians throughout the piece.  As Steve Reich traveled on trains across the country in trains with his governess to visit his divorced parents, and considering also his part-Jewish ancestry, the sounds of the trains remained with him and were a point of inspiration to write a musical piece in memoriam.

            The excerpts you will hear are taken from the opening of the first movement (0:00-1:00), the halfway point to the second movement (13:00-14:00), and the ending of the third movement (19:30-20:20) respectively.  The first movement, entitled, “America- Before the War” has an opening that is relatively upbeat, with percussive passages in the stringed instruments and the first words are realized as a melody before the speaker shares the words “from Chicago to New York.”  This has been interpreted as simple of an act as Reich recalling his own experiences with railway travel growing up. 

The second movement, entitled “Europe- during the War” has Holocaust survivors retelling their stories of arriving at the concentration camps through trains, with the phrase “into those cattle wagons for four days and four nights.”  Following each spoken phrase, the stringed instruments not reciting the spoken part recreates the sound of European train whistles at a very high pitch and a loud dynamic.  This haunting realization of taped sounds gives a stark contrast to how the train whistle in Europe sounded compared to American trains, as well as what the whistles might have sounded like as it was the carrying its human cargo to their final habitation. 

Finally, in “America- after the War,” the third movement shifts to different tempi and moods, from agitated and quick to deliberate and deeply moving.  The text surrounding this excerpt has a woman stating “there was one girl who had a beautiful voice, and they loved to listen to the singing, the Germans,” and the passage has yet another rhythmic quality, creating a macabre feeling mixed with eerie curiosity as to what was so beautiful that the Germans, the cause of such grief, could be moved to hear such music?

 

Reich’s piece provides a glimpse of history in the context of spoken word and musical imitation.  The stringed instruments act as a double for the sound effects of trains and the human voice.  With this, we can see and hear how the simple sound of a train can be both deafening and horrifying when put in the context of a mode of transportation to a concentration camp as told by survivors.  Add to this that the realizations of the spoken interview clips are not ideally tonal in structure and one can see the atonal, irregular patterns of speech reflected in musical motifs symbolize the dark nature of the subject matter.  The piece gives insight into how trains in Europe and America sounded in the 1930s and 1940s.  Also, the stories of the survivors certainly are a perspective to the accounts on a first-hand basis.  The short, fragmented audio segments can be interpreted that perhaps Reich intended for the stories of the Holocaust survivors to be short, and that the entire story cannot be told because those who could complete it are gone.  Listening to this piece can prompt these questions, and as you discover more about the Holocaust in your library research, perhaps you will find the source of the music and find the light at the end of the rather dark tunnel of history in 1940s Europe. 

Ballet Process

As a tribute to John Coltrane’s process behind “A Love Supreme,” I am presenting an idea that has been forming in my head for quite some time now.  Since I came to Luther, I have wanted to contribute something to the sport of wrestling, which has held a very sacred place in my heart.  By merging the movement and intensity of wrestling with the movement and intensity of dance form such as ballet, both aspects of my life can finally mingle in one wavelength as opposed to having one influence the other. As one will see in the layout of this design, my dramatic format will be presented in three main “acts.”  These acts will represent the year leading up to competition, the competition, and the immediate effect after competition.  I describe Act 1 in four parts: Introduction, “Joy,” “Victory,” and “Practice.”  The end of Act 1 is the most dramatic, although not nearly as dramatic as the transition between Acts 2 and 3.  The most prominent theme is the “victory theme,” which I have found to be a variation from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” with an additional note in the mix to be added when necessary.  The “victory” motif is Bb, A, F repeated twice, followed by D, C, Bb repeated twice, and finally F, Eb, D repeated.  This theme is repeated would be repeated in many forms: non-traditional rhythms, scherzo tempi, inverted passages to represent failure, etc.  This theme would be rampant within the work.

The themes present in the “Joy,” “Victory,” and “Practice” are all connected, as the choreography of the “Joy” movement is the joy of existence, more or less.  The joy of experiencing the breath of fresh air as one goes out into nature, the joy of physical exertion, the joy of recognition, and the joy of friendship and bonding will all be present in the “Joy” theme with a lively, uptempo feeling throughout the movement.  The “Victory” is a bit more regal; as if the hero of the movement is the one person that all the younger generation looks up to for guidance and the way to behave like a “cool person.”  There is a lot of brass in this movement, and there is a feeling of swagger to this movement.  “Practice” is a bit more jagged, with the forces of all the “cool kids” from “Victory” coming together to hash out their problems and unstable melodies together to create something solid.  Perhaps this movement will consist of different parts playing in different meters, only until the last five minutes finally synching up to create something better.  The “Victory” motif and the “Joy” themes are all inverted to dorian and aeolian modes, creating a minor, inverted feeling.  Meanwhile, the dancers are exasperating their breath keeping up with the steady beat of the percussion, which keeps time during the practice session and is the uncompromising commander of the room.  This authoritarian sound and figure is the coach, which will transition into the referee in the second act and finally the participants and athletes in the third.

The second act takes a turn for the dark.  Everything about the “Joy” movement is present in such a disjointed and dissonant way, that it becomes uncomfortable to watch.  I imagine one scene in the “Doubt,” which leads right into the beginning of the “Ritual” that sounds very much like the “Rite of Spring: Augurs of Spring” with the dissonant, rhythmically aggressive movements.  The tone of the “Doubt” movement begins the quest for two particular athletes who experience doubt in their competition and in themselves, and they struggle to free themselves of this burden through sacrifice of their own bodies and sacrifice of the time they had so easily and joyously established in the first act.  They are completely alone, separated from each other and from their peers, dedicating their lives to the shrine of physical and mental perfection.  Thee themes are blended as the “Doubt” and the “Ritual” take place musically. I also imagine a chromatic ascension in the piccolo on a drone, as if making the sound of a tea kettle, and the high resonance creates such a shrieking sound that the tension will erupt from such a pounding noise to bring the message home that sacrifice is perhaps not something to endorse.

The pre-match starts in silence.  The sounds created from the stage are what provide solace.  The cheering of the crowd, the noise made from more practice and rituals, etc.  The the strings enter on drones that change slowly, like in first species counterpoint at a slow tempo.  Then, the strings build from half notes to quarter, then eighth, then sixteenth note drones, and the scherzo begins of creating the buzz of anticipation.  This is all under a muffled, pianissimo sound.  All of these things are happening in the minds of the athletes.  Themes from “Joy” and “Practice” emerge.  Single spotlight images from “Joy” and “Practice” emerge with it.  The match begins and is controlled by the sound of a whistle, guided by the referee controlling the match.  Onstage, a wrestling match will be happening.  The entire orchestra will be split in half, one group to the first athlete, the second half to the other athlete.  Various patterns, motifs, and sounds will be played during the match; when one athlete is in favor, the corresponding group will grow in their parts’ volume and intensity.  When the referee indicates a certain cue, a certain passage will sound.  This will be controlled without a conductor; only the referee and the athletes control the pacing of the music.  When the match ends, Act 3 begins.

Drama and thick orchestration will follow the match, with the “Purge”: of the defeated and of the victorious.  Coloratura-like runs will accompany the woodwinds and string section.  After this theme ceases, “Absence” is the recreation of Acts 1 and 2 in a 4 minute span: the joy, the pain, the practice, the doubt, the ritual, the match that caused victory or defeat.  All of this done solely with choreography.  No music will aid the powerful message of a defeated athlete trying to regain their strength or to watch the victorious thrive.  The epilogue is an entity that can be characterized on its own.  The epilogue is the rising of the new day; both athletes awaken as new people, refreshed that the world does not end because of the previous day’s accomplishments.  The beginning of the epilogue starts with low strings in Eb quarter notes, un poco piu lento (quarter=74).  A trombone solo sings the dominant triad above this, creating a suspended sound.  This continues on with various woodwind instruments.  At the end of the movement, the victory motif emerges slowly, not as before; the power of victory can burst through all other forms, through all torment, failure, doubt, and passion.  Victory alone rises above the chaos below it, and it resounds at the end, up a perfect fourth and altogether in a final fortissimo Eb chord through the entire orchestra.   

Manifesto

The musical works and philosophies of John Cage, Laurie Anderson, and Osvaldo Golijov are non-traditional and modern forms of expression, and all three of these composers bring about a certain challenge to what is considered “classical music.”  When considering the music of Laurie Anderson, for example, when meticulously taking apart a song such as “O Superman,” a song that on the surface seems like a song of prose and two chord changes with one Vocoder-enhanced note acting as a pedal tone throughout an eight minute piece, the ways in which Anderson evokes her music is through another level known as performance artistry.  Perhaps Anderson’s music cannot simply be listened to; Anderson’s music can be seen through the movement of her body, through the movement of her images presented simultaneously with her music, and through the understanding of text on a much deeper level when paired with the visual art she creates. 

Even when looking at one particular piece of Laurie Anderson, three points can be made to consider as a listener, performer, or composer: first, that music, which has the ability to move and inspire, does not have to be limited to sound.  Music is an organization of sound, and determining the origins of that sound through visualization can only enhance the performance of those sounds, granted that visualization is provided with respect to the progression of the music.  If Laurie Anderson’s work is performed in any way contradictory to the music she is creating, that would be a hindrance to the ides she is presenting. 

Second, that music, which is created and presented, is an art form whose contributors do not need to be mutually exclusive.  This is to say that those who create music have an idea; who better to present those ideas than the composer herself?  Anderson is a prime example of this, and she demonstrates that her ideas lead to many points of discussion, analysis, and enjoyment as a listener to see and hear. 

Finally, that music, which reflects individual perspectives, has a duality of meaning and interpretation that lies with an individual and with a larger group of people that speaks much more than the music itself can accomplish standing alone.  Anderson’s work, especially when reflected in Susan McClery’s article concerning “Langue d’amour,” (Class packet, pp. 72-74), is the refection of her own experiences as an individual voice (literally, through her spoken and sung verse) and from a feminist perspective.  Going into the mind of Laurie Anderson as an individual and as a woman through her music allows all listeners to see, hear, and experience the complex, tumultuous, intense, intimate, and indeed authentic life of a woman capable, and masterfully so if not unappreciatively recognized, of thought-provoking music on a level that requires the attention as a member of the fight for equality between people and musical styles.

            Osvaldo Golijov’s work, as reflected through both the classical setting of mass and liturgical text and the regional and multicultural settings of liturgical text, is a fine point in exploring the second half of the last point I made reference to in Anderson’s work.  This point, concerning social and communal expression of music through various styles, focuses on the setting of Saint Mark’s Passion of Jesus through Latin American-inspired music in a classical style.  The merging together of styles and cultural significance to express a text, idea, or story create an alternative approach to the mass setting of a noted Christian event.

            Golijov’s use of additional means of expression such as dance and specific non-classical soloists is an aspect of how a composer influences the interpretation of a musical style.  With specific score markings and requirements of choreography, stage setup, soloist styles, and inter-musical markings such as “funky” (Golijov score, packet), Golijov is introducing style to display music in a particular way.  In addition, Golijov’s influences of Latin American patterns in the music through the various movements show how culture plays a role in the creation and the promotion of music.  If the presence of samba and tango and even Caribbean patterns didn’t appear in the “San Marcos Pasion”, the dancing may seem obsolete in the middle of the work.  One more point to make is of the implication of religious text and content in music.  Regardless of the religious views of a composer, performer, or listener, the meaning of the text is relative to the message of the text itself and the factors surrounding the performance of the music.  When considering an ELCA Lutheran liturgical setup, the names of a praise band, gospel choir, reggae, jazz, and contemporary do not always come to mind.  As mentioned in class, the Lutheran Book of Worship contains no “cultural” songs, and less than ten percent of the Evangelical Book of Worship is under that category.  This culture is in stark contrast to Latin American Catholicism, where the Lenten season is celebrated much like a New Orleans funeral.  This can be explained when the arrest of Jesus occurs, and the chorus continues a refrain that is interactive in movement and festive in mood, as opposed to a terrifying, daunting, ominous feeling from different cultures.  Golijov’s “San Marcos Pasion” still speaks to a universal truth, however, with the “Agonia” and a soprano soloist sings of the agony of Jesus.  This point alone shows that differences may occur with how composers and performers present music, but if the “classical music” strand exists, there will always be some form of connection between what is considered “classical music” from northeastern Europe and “classical music” from northeastern Central and South America or south central Africa or north-northwest India. 

            The works of John Cage, ranging from prepared piano pieces to “ 4’33” ” to “Atlas Elipticalis,” explore something of musical philosophy that I find very important.  John Cage’s works, like those of Boulez, were hoping to achieve something against the music of the past; that is to say, the music before World War II, when the world had a sort of Romantic naïveté.  Boulez was attempting to follow the works of Messaien and Stockhausen in the European method and systematically devise music without the organization of musical and melodic structure, like Schoenberg did during his later years.  Cage, on the other hand, was an individual who was completely original in his ideas to present sound as music.

             While I found both Boulez and Cage equally interesting in terms of philosophical ideas, I came across one question in favor of Cage and curious of Boulez, and I believe I have made this point before: what is the purpose of tonally structured rows, the purpose of dynamic regulation, the purpose of mathematically devising a system to create music when the great composers before the twentieth century were making music through the same form of rigid regulation?  If we are to be truly free from Western music, we must eliminate ourselves from the idea that music can exist apart from sound.  John Cage explores how sound is created in time, in space, and in relation to other sounds.  The ultimate in acoustic engineering, John Cage created a world from his mind that forced even Boulez to think (even if he eventually turned away from these points) about how sound is the source of music and therefore the ultimate goal.  In the modern world, sound is the only stipulation for music, and the organization of it is meaningless if there is a purpose for that organization: to feel something, to think of something, to be moved to do something intentionally.  Perhaps the sensation of sound is musical in and of itself, and that is the purpose of why we make noise in the first place.  John Cage delves into this much deeper than Boulez does in that regard, by exploring how to define and create music without music or its vocabulary, mechanisms, techniques, or parameters.

            Thinking of all three of these artists, we see the following points: that music is a collection of sound that creates space and moves through time, that music is sound when it is coming from somewhere, that music is sound that reflects one individual as well as the communal collective, and that music cannot mean more than what it essentially is (organized sound) without someone to organize it.  In all three of these artists, we see the significance and the effect of the performer in their respective works.  The contemplation of music without a performer is wonderful to consider, but what would that leave for the future of music?  We may not know for quite some while.  The philosophy of music in Anderson, Cage, and Golijov all present some form of an idea, be it the significance of one idea extrapolated upon through Anderson, the idea of omnipotence in the word of the Christian gospel through Golijov despite the regional methods of interpretation (religiously, this could translate into “religious pluralism”), and the aim to be absent of ideas, leaving chance to be the deciding factor of music. 

           

With that, I write my manifesto to music:

            -I believe that music is sound, at its base form.  For those who do not know sound, music can exist through feeling and sight in addition (ie: the end of Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 with the violins bowing simultaneously and the brass shining in the concert light with a shattering timpani and bass drum to end the whole thing)

            -I believe that music cannot exist without people.  Much like the philosophy of “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”, where the technicality lies with the fact that the effect of mass striking another mass to create vibrations can only be defined “sound” if it is indeed perceived through the aural capacities, so music cannot yet exist where sound as we know it can simply exist without anyone to recognize that it is created as music.

            -I believe that music is intentional.  Chance and moment music are deviations of this, but when the idea is formed to have music based solely on chance, that still is the intent to create something. 

            -I believe that music is emotional.  Regardless of research that suggests exercising with music enhances performance or the mental benefits of listening to classical music as an infant, music is a reaction to sound.  What can move one can stop another, and music can both create an urge to move yet remain perfectly still to determine the resolution of a sound. 

            -I believe that atonal and non-traditional music is an important art form to understand.  Without this knowledge, how can one possibly be content with music not having experienced the entire spectrum of its possibilities? 

            -I believe that music cannot change, but augment.  So long as humanity has the means to hear, the mind to interpret, and the heart to listen, music will never be lost to one group or another, one time or another, one place or another, one sound or another.  With music, more and more can become of the sounds of the ever-expanding universe.

            -I believe that music is full of tension.  From the foundation of sound vibrations on the eardrum to the most vague philosophical standpoint, music is filled with the tension to resolve, to open, to close, to die, grandly or gently, and to continue.  Something as simple as two frequencies, with one remaining and the other moving, creates such a desire to find the balance between the two frequencies.

            -I believe that music cannot be enjoyed on its own terms.  With performance anxiety, historical background, political references, emotional tendencies, stereotypes, performer and composer obstacles, (specifically performer obstacles: emotional baggage in preparation, stress of rehearsal, interpretation, collaboration efforts, and especially physical attractiveness as displayed both through the art form itself and through the performance of it), criticism, objection to new and alternative music, the industrialization of music, and the ironic desire to learn to “appreciate music,” we as listeners tend to bring too much to music that we can never fully understand what it gives to us: how wonderful it is to experience sound in a collective jargon of timbres, rates, volumes, and interpretations, that sound comes from all stretches of the world in all forms and in all movements, and that this is essentially the desire to find when hearing music.  I believe that in our effort to find music beautiful, we forget to remember that it all is in its own right.  Music, in its base form, is, in the words of Plato, good, true, and beautiful. 

Laurie Anderson Keynote Introduction

            Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinguished privilege to present our keynote speaker for this evening’s capstone lecture series, Ms. Laurie Anderson.  Ms. Anderson’s work in performance art and contemporary music has made a monumental effect in the contemporary, avant-garde, downtown musical world.  A leading female composer and technological performance artist, Anderson’s life and work created a development for the individual through performance artist genre and the development of feminist ideology through the textual and analytical interpretation of her works.  Born in Illinois, Ms. Anderson is a graduate of Columbia University and was involved with the avant-garde art form, a genre that includes works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and John Cage.

            The majority of Ms. Anderson’s works comprise electronic instruments and the spoken word as well as vocalized pitches and the use of percussion.  These examples are best displayed through her single “O Superman,” which contains a Vocoder-amplified loop of a “ha” sound on C4 throughout the eight-minute piece while her speaking and singing voice provides additional text and material.  This single made top charts in the UK during the 1980s, and made resurgence after September 11 with its controversial and provocative text.  Ms. Anderson’s work also has spread throughout the avant-garde and the performance artist spectrums with pieces such as “Language is a Virus,” “Let X=X,” and “Big Science,” to name a few.  All these pieces deal with the interpretation of Ms. Anderson’s words in combination with her speaking voice, which provides an additional layer to receive her music.

            In addition to her profound musical decisions, Ms. Anderson’s artistic display has been the source for much discussion, debate, and exploration into the same subjects for our purposes today.  When listening to Ms. Anderson’s works, one cannot ignore her speaking voice, her use of her own body in her performances, and her display of feminist ideas through her lyrics.  Along the lines of what author and scholar Susan McClary states, Ms. Anderson’s work reflects the use of the female body as a positive aspect to music making, as opposed to the “traditional” form of music, which disregards the composer from the performance as well as the performer from the music with black clothing or assignments of seating in an orchestra, defining as well as confining (McClary, pg. 74-75 in article). 

            Ms. Anderson’s works display both an undefined presenter and a contradictory textual tract, with the speaking voice playing such a prominent role yet not defining a vocal standard, as well as not creating an objective for the listener to search for with her use of prose.  Certainly Ms. Anderson’s work causes us to pay attention to what is in front of us, so that we may speak with clarity, equality, and confidence so that what is before and beyond us can be met with understanding and the notion that not all things must end.  The cyclical nature of Ms. Anderson’s work has us aching for more, and surely tonight will be much the same.  Please welcome Ms. Laurie Anderson.

Modern Decemberfest

Greetings my fellow Iowavillians,        

  This coming December, the Iowaville Community Center and the Iowaville Orchestra will be presenting a concert representing the dissolve of time and the preservation of sound in the works of various composers, ending with portions of John Cage’s Atlas Ellipticalis.  Since the stirring yet successful concert of contemporary music featuring the work of Bob Dylan, I have decided to take the idea of music one step further, reflecting on the works of contemporary artists and their eclectic musical interpretation.  December’s concert will present musical ideas of form, sound, and time.  How each of these works differed in their approach to presenting these ideas will hopefully resonate with the anticipated audience.  To continue on with the idea of historical background before the curtain rises, I would like to present this information of why I am choosing such a range of compositions to represent the ideas of form, sound, and time.

            Beethoven’s works are either infinitely famous or infamously discredited following their premiere.  Even today, the classical music listener may hear a few Beethoven symphonies over the other, and typically would hear more of his orchestral than his vocal or chamber works, or even his one opera.  The fact that the work is set in a string quartet is noteworthy, as the fugue subjects arrive like a solo line, which feels very exposed and it sounds as such.  This idea of solo sounds is an idea I feel connects to Cage’s work in that any piece of the orchestra that is paired with a designated part still creates its own unique timbre, much like the Grosse Fuge with its exposed line.

            Another composer to consider when looking at John Cage’s work through the lens of history is through the American modernist composer Charles Ives, whose work ran a few decades before Cage came into the forefront of the compositional world.  Ives’ compositions give an insight into what was evolving in the modern musical world, especially in the Unites States in the 20^th century.  Ives’ piece The Unanswered Question starts almost like Ralph Vaughn Williams’ orchestral work Variation on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; the constant drone of the strings keeps the notion that sound is constant.  Ives places a solo trumpet in a different location in the room when performing this piece, and this creates an additional dimension to the work in that music becomes a piece that is measured by space and time.  John Cage mentions this when discussing his appreciation for sound and what music is (Cage video, Friday lecture).  I believe that the tonal consistency of the string section in Ives’ piece gives a complementary frame for Cage’s work to be heard.

            Finally, John Serry Sr. wrote for the free bass accordion and created a work to be played by an accordion.  I am placing this piece in our concert because we have a remarkable accordion player by the name of Arnold Berg who has agreed to share in this contemporary work.  The use of one voice in the solo bass accordion not only ties in with Beethoven’s soloistic fugue subjects, but ties with Cage by use of non-traditional instruments in traditional form, as Cage started to do when he composed pieces for what was called a “prepared piano,” which contained anything from a hammer to a rubber chicken in the keys to create non-traditional sounds. 

            I wish to conclude this introduction to our December concert event by saying that John Cage’s works are something to be explored, and giving justice to listening to his music gives us great insight into how we create music.  When music is created, performed, and listened to, we adhere to the ideas of the composer and the preservation of those ideas through the performers.  When we look at John Cage’s music, we see many controversial subjects arise: the absence of thought to create art, the absence of performer intent to create music for music’s sake through a changing world, and the dynamics of sound and how it can be organized.  Beethoven was able to create music despite being completely deaf during the last ten years of his life through adherence to counterpoint and harmonic tendencies that fit in the classical style.  Arnold Schoenberg was able to utilize serialism and atonality to create his music, which led him to reach out and experiment with form so long as he had his backbone of atonal structure with him.  Charles Ives uses these same techniques when he wrote rows and systems of musical patterns, which I hope you will see when you attend our concert this December. 

Pierre Boulez, a colleague and acquaintance of John Cage and a student of Olivier Messiaen, created a system to categorize his music with pitches, rhythms, and dynamics to create order from what sounded and sounds like a chaotic work.  John Cage’s work, however, seems to not only break from traditional form, timbre, ensemble, and instrumentation, but seems to break free even further than Boulez was.  I ask myself this as I listen to Cage: if the 20^th century is a new era, why would we not find a completely new way to organize and create if we are striving to create music that is completely original?  The mere fact that John Cage’s works are categorized by a stopwatch and on the time continuum is what separates his works from other modernist composers of his time.  He lectures about nothing; he creates nothing, but rather takes what is already present and places a frame around it.  If we are able to come together to see this art as it is, we will have set out to see what John Cage and many 20^th century modernist composers, and even revolutionary composers like Beethoven, set out to display for the sake of music and art.

A Letter to the Editor: Iowaville Post

To the Editor:

 As the director of the Iowaville Community Center, I have been the recipient of wonderful opportunities.  This past week’s endeavors to promote works by Bob Dylan, however, has not been one of those opportunities.  The main reasons for this are because of the program setup.  Many people have become confused and shown dissent with my decision to include a gospel choir to perform spirituals and also with my inclusion of up-and-coming resident composer Dylan Carlson to arrange songs by Kanye West.  Before I explain my decision to keep Dylan’s songs in our program, I would like to explain my pre-concert program well ahead of schedule.

When listening to the songs by Bob Dylan, I cannot help but find a sense of nostalgia.  My parents listened to Bob Dylan when I was growing up, and I remember my father being especially drawn to the philosophy of the words.  I never fully understood what he found from the lyrics, but growing up and listening to Dylan more often has helped me to see the fire, the charge, and the raw emotion of his lyrics.  Couple this with the same melodic setup of a folk tune, and you have a song that has a deeper meaning.  What makes Dylan’s songs so unique, however, is his voice and overall presentation.  Despite Peter, Paul, & Mary’s rendition of Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” becoming immensely popular, Dylan’s music is unique to him, and not strictly because of the music he was creating.

I must present these points of Bob Dylan because the context through which Dylan wrote his music is very different from the reaction his music received.  Dylan’s claim is that his music was artistically driven and nothing more.  In 1961 when his first album was produced, most of his music pertained to folk tunes that he remade into his own production with a few original songs.  In 1962 and 1963 when his second album was produced, almost all of Dylan’s material was his own.  When we look at Dylan’s work, we must be able to look at all of his work, not simply the most noted songs.  As a part of the Community Center’s mission, I have been seeking the complete exposure of art and community expression.  When the community asked for Bob Dylan, I am presenting Bob Dylan in his complete form with respect to the requests of the community.

In addition to Dylan’s musical background, we must consider his personal background.  For those in the community that avidly support the Community Center and its arts series, I have found little agitated responses.  However, I have found that the promotional efforts of this series have seen a negative reaction.  Why is it that his relationship with Suzie Rotolo has been the root of many complaints?  If Dylan was influenced by his relationship with her, as non-traditional as it may have been, why should we not discuss this?  What other possibilities lie with artists when they engage in various personal activities, which we all do as the common human experience?  Are we to deny that for someone because they are supposed to represent us?  I think of the work of poet and author Oscar Wilde, who in 19^th century United Kingdom was condemned for being a homosexual, wrote a substantial amount and has been a tremendous influence into the English writing world.  I cannot foresee the issue with stating the biography of someone who will not be in attendance to object to our observations.

In mentioning Dylan’s biography, we tend to forget the main points of Dylan’s career, which has spanned even through the current day.  During the 1960s, Dylan’s music was associated with protest and civil rights.  Dylan insists that he was not intentional about this in his songwriting.  In the mid-1960s, Dylan was booed when he started to play an electric guitar, straying from his country/folk influences.  In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued to sing and write, and in the late 1980s, he wrote music that was not even related to protest music.  Why have we not heard more of this music?  Did it suddenly become bad?  Did Dylan’s career become like Michael Jordan’s hiatus from basketball to pursue baseball?  I submit that Dylan’s music is not performed because we are simply not used to hearing all of Bob Dylan.  And if we have an opportunity to hear more of this at our concert series, why must this be denied because it requires a change to listen to something new?

I would like to point out that Dylan’s music has the potential to run parallels with the music of spirituals, gospel pieces, and diverse pieces such as the pieces we will be performing.  Early spiritual and jazz pieces, specifically pieces performed by African-American performers, send a message of hope, power, solidarity, and love on a different scale than the folk tradition of Appalachia and Western-American songs.  Even folk legend Woody Guthrie had songs with exceptions to the rule of folk tradition, and the lyrics “This Land is Your Land” could even be interpreted as a civil-inspired song, with the phrase “this land was made for you and me.”  If we consider the fact that Guthrie originally had that phrase as “God blessed America for me,” we see that there was a reason for Guthrie to change the lyrics.  Why that is we may not know, but it is interesting to see how music means something very different when we change or if we stay the same in the traditional sense.

So, my final decision to keep these artists together is simple: what you heard then is what you may hear now.  Mr. Dylan could not, and I will not, ignore the fact that the music of the 1960s was an art form that had the capacity to speak to people fighting for a cause.  I cannot perfectly separate the history from the music, and the political implications of Dylan’s music are what made it so powerful and, in turn, so famous.  When Dylan’s music started to achieve covers from big-name artists, it makes you think of the effect of the music or the words.  Certainly the musical form was nothing extraordinary.  In our presentations, you will see that the forms Dylan uses are nothing more strenuous or over-complex from a Woody Guthrie song.  The text and the meaning behind the music is what makes Dylan’s music deep.  “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “Oxford Town” are all names of songs that seem innocent enough, but when looking through the lyrics, are much more suggestive and exciting. 

When a group of people responds to music, it becomes something bigger for that group of people.  We must consider this as we look at Bob Dylan.  We must leave Dylan’s effect on those who experienced his music.  My father may resonate with Dylan more than I do, and I expect that to happen.  More people may draw inspiration from his words that I, a Caucasian man, do in any given moment, and I expect that to happen.  What I must do is let the music go and affect people.  As a musician, we must allow our music to do that.  As audience members and community members, we would do well to remember that music does not belong to us, especially when it means so many things to so many people.

Other than some young kid who sounded like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan was not much more substantial until his music was taken from the surface on which he wrote it and out into the world to be reflected on and to be a medium to demonstrate, to rise up, to rise against, and take a stand.  That is a powerful message, and a message I believe should persevere.  If I have the chance to demonstrate that message in this art series, I will always take that chance. 

Shostakovich and Soviet Realism

When looking at the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, one has to see that there are two levels to his music, and that is both the initial level and the true level (lecture notes, Wednesday), and these levels reveal Shostakovich’s compositional intentions as an artist and, indirectly, as a political figure.  On the surface, I interpreted Shostakovich’s works as thick, haunting, intense, and even violent at times.  Shostakovich’s use of the percussion and the string bass section at the finale of his Fifth Symphony and throughout his Eleventh Symphony left me feeling uneasy, and I noticed that the depth of the vibrations of the bass drum with the timpani carried further than a majority of the instruments.  This left me with a feeling of shock, as if I had woken up very abruptly and had to reorient myself.

The orchestration and musical development of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is different than when reacting to Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” whose texture arrives to a conclusion in a much more subdued manner.  For example, Shostakovich uses doubled string parts on perfect fifths in the beginning, returning to this “idée fixe” after a muted trumpet solo.  This string section rises from C to F#, an augmented fourth as well as a major seventh in the lowest notes.  This left me with a sense of uneasiness that is not noticed in Debussy’s work when a flute solo, rather than an ensemble, returns on the same chromatic passage after a horn solo.  The key relationships between the solos are perfect fourths and minor sevenths, which feels softer than the dissonances Shostakovich gives.

After Shostakovich’s opera, “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” was poorly received by Joseph Stalin (Ross, Chapter 7), his Fifth Symphony was written a year later.  Perhaps Shostakovich had written this symphony in direct response to an article that may have been written by Joseph Stalin.  Perhaps Shostakovich’s deathbed recollection of subdued messages created in his music, which was recorded by Solomon Volkov, (lecture notes, Wednesday) is true, and Shostakovich was indeed recalling that his Fifth Symphony was a sarcastic and bitter reaction to the Communist Party’s demand for unity.  Whether or not these implications are valid, the speculation of such is compelling enough when reacting to Shostakovich’s music, which is fraught with tension.  When looking at the music through this lens of socialist realism, although one does not have to be inspired by the historical context to appreciate and love the music, the factors surrounding Shostakovich’s works is something to consider when hearing his music, even at the base level.

One more interpretation of Shostakovich’s imprint on Soviet music lies in his use of two “musical monikers” (lecture notes, Wednesday), which specifically identify Shostakovich as a composer.  The first moniker spells the German abbreviation for his own name: D, S (Es, or Eb), C, H (B natural), and the second spells the name of a woman called Elmira (E, A for “la”, E for “mi”, D for “Re”, and A), which is incidentally the same theme used in Gustav Mahler’s “Lied vom der Erde,” a theme depicting death.  Could the influences Mahler or Elmira had on Shostakovich’s life prove powerful enough to intentionally be the subject for Shostakovich’s works?  What is Shostakovich trying to say when he includes figures musically, but does not, or perhaps cannot, do so in writing, in public addresses, in social or political life?

Bringing the subjects of Shostakovich’s musical intentions into one category is difficult.  In fact, the musical and political factors should be seen in their own right rather than simply thrown together.  When listening to Shostakovich’s music, one might feel a sense of unease and turmoil from a man who was afraid of his own shadow for a substantial portion of his life.  As the image at the top of this post shows, the black and white lighting seems to accentuate the dark around Shostakovich.  Add to this the fact that about 30 million farmers in Russia were removed from their homes, 82% of the entire population were living in poverty and dying in the process from disease or starvation, and in 25 years, about 25 million people died in “purges” by the government (lecture notes, Monday), and one might have a very grim outlook on the Soviet Union during the years of Joseph Stalin.

However, despite his controversy with the government, Shostakovich continued to write.  What I find interesting is that of the many composers (Schubert, Mahler, Shoenberg, Vaughn Williams) who could not surpass Beethoven’s grand number of symphonies, Shostakovich wrote 15.  When looking at Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” the context behind its reaction was based on the fact that its premiere was in Paris during the turn of the 20^th century, giving way to the European movement of atonality and the Second Viennese School.  The context behind Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony premiere is quite different: in 1956, a year before its premiere, the blockade government in Hungary was protested and the Soviet Union eventually had to overthrow the revolution.   Shostakovich seems to be writing a work honoring the revolutionaries in 1905, but the public reaction seems to go beyond this meaning.

I wonder what the reaction would have been had Stravinsky been in Russia at the dawn of the Bolshevik revolution when premiering the “Rite.”  I wonder what would the reaction have been or what would have happened to Shostakovich if the Hungarian revolutionaries had been successful before the premiere of the Eleventh.  I wonder what would have happened if the United States government had taken a second round of McCarthy-esque hearings on the music of the world immediately following 9/11.  I wonder what would have happened had Aaron Copland included identifying monikers of his own rather than using folk tunes as prominently as he did or as prominently as Shostakovich did in the fourth movement of the Eleventh.  Without a positive reference to a country’s history, does that make that music anarchical?  With no reference to personal creativity, does that mean the death of the creative process in music?  When Shostakovich, Copland, and Adams become the center of attention only when their music does not create a good atmosphere, does that mean their music is not inherently beautiful in their own right without the political contexts?

Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is a whirlwind of a work, with one idea coming back to reflect on a time since passed.  Musically, it is enriching and staggering with its use of earth-shaking bass and percussion sections, strings coming together in parallel thirds, reflective of Russian orthodox music, and folk tunes to inspire the memory of a time when life for the common man was harsh, new, and unpredictable.  Thankfully, Shostakovich’s days did not end “very badly” so that we could hear such wonderful music.

Aaron Copland

            Aaron Copland’s 1942 piece Lincoln Portrait shows how his compositional techniques are put into practice, especially in regard to orchestral arranging.  Copland’s use of the brass instruments is uniquely to Copland because the brass plays a consistently strong role in the orchestration.  Whether it is through forte or piano dynamics, the brass section is a prominent texture throughout Lincoln Portrait.  Copland’s use of the brass is used in a similar way that the string section is used in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in that both provide a consistent texture, but Copland uses the brass section as a way to present a theme, whereas Stravinsky uses the strings to provide more of an accompaniment.  What is also noteworthy of Copland’s piece is it a standard of what Copland’s “popular sound” was: open fourths and fifths, prominent brass, definite sense of pulse, a quality of precision that is reminiscent of a fanfare, and a predictable exchange of tonality that feels flexible as opposed to strictly atonal (Wednesday class notes).  These qualities are expressed in the orchestra from the beginning of the piece, with the trumpets continuing an E and the flutes changing their melody to create an oblique motion, maintaining quartile and quintal harmonies (Copland, score from packet).

            When Copland incorporates folk melodies into Lincoln Portrait, he does not incorporate Stravinsky’s additive process; Copland’s use of folk tunes is clearly stated.  What can also be said is Copland will typically provide a folk tune as a solo, then repeated in multiple voices (Copland, score from packet), as in mm. 40-50, where the clarinet begins the melody to the folk parody “The Pesky Serpent,” and the oboe, flute, and trumpet follow the same melody in succession.  If holding to the argument that Copland’s music was subversively Communistic, could it be said that having all parts of the orchestra repeating the same cry and same song shows that the American essence should be the unity of a single idea?

            Copland’s use of a spoken voice in the orchestration brings an honest sound to the piece, and therefore accessibility for those who are inspired by the words of the piece.  One can see a comparison to the Sprechstimme method Schoenberg uses in his Pierrot suite.  The sounds created with a spoken voice, with no direction in pitch or rhythm is different than when listening to Pierrot: the depth of the speaking voice is different than a guided vocal line, and the absence of a melody leaves the listener the ability to absorb the text.  In a way, Copland’s use of a spoken voice to present the text is an even freer medium.  Perhaps Copland has this as a vision of how the word of the Great Emancipator should be interpreted.  Copland seems to build on the dramatic tension of Lincoln’s words, with the Gettysburg Address excerpt maintaining a calm feeling, with the finale giving one last fortissimo after the words “..shall not perish from the earth.”  If Copland’s music is interpreted as patriotic, then it should speak to the form of American music.  Copland does this and more: easily recognized, accessible, and open sounds with the use of spoken text rather than a strictly followed vocalized line.

            Aaron Copland’s background as a composition student as well as an individual is a factor under which his music was written.  As an American citizen, he was unique, much like many in his generation “he was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants; he was an ardent leftist; he was gay…he had a plausible claim to the evanescent mythology of the frontier and the Wild West…” (Ross, p.290).  When considering these things, we can understand the perspective of a first generation gay leftist composer creating the music he created, either for Hollywood or for the concert hall.  When hearing Lincoln Portrait, the open and simple yet continuous melodies are patriotic, bringing American sound into a singular form.  What is ironic is that the music he was creating, which is fueled by his own personal influences, opinions, and intentions, was censored and scrupulously monitored for being music created by someone who did not sympathize with a “typical” American political ideology. 

Music and Place

1)            The blues is a series of fixed harmonic progressions typically in a root or root-seventh form that leads to subdominant and dominant before returning to complete a cycle of song.  This form is shaped typically in twelve bars of music, and the form stays true even when a solo line is improvised or taken by other instrumentalists or performers in the group.  A call-and-response is also found in this form of music.  Early jazz is influenced by this when it takes a similar form of blues; Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver use what is called ”blues notes” to modify a particular key or harmony.  This, with the response of singer to instrumentalist or instrumentalist to another in a solo segment, is how the blues tradition is kept in the earliest forms of jazz.  In “Blue Horizon,” the clarinet solo throughout the song bends pitch to lead up to resolutions of the larger four-bar phrases, which is an example of using “blues notes”  (Wednesday, Friday lecture notes). 

            The songs brought into the jazz genre of the 20^th century stays true to blues in some ways, although it does not remain completely faithful.  This can be shown in the presence of the root form of chords and the bass instruments creating an arpeggio from that.  The call-and-response form of blues, which can actually be traced to spirituals, is different in that improvisation is the key factor in how that melody is presented.  Instruments in the jazz groups stay true to the Creole tradition of New Orleans bands with a trombone, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, and piano.  This is brought into a wider norm with the emergence of the Old Dixieland Jazz Band and their band setup.

            To me, the early jazz forms are more lyrical than jazz today.  From what I know of jazz, the swing rhythms and the fast tempos of many pieces are more of big band, bebop, or jive origins, all of which are some derivative of early jazz and standard 12-bar blues.  I associate jazz with a swing tune, one that has a slow tempo, yet feels progressive because of the percussion and the ensemble as a whole. 

When I hear the works that we listened to such as those of Charley Patton or Bessie Davis, I hear a melody and it sounds very lyrical.  The accompaniment of swing and extreme syncopation exists, but it does not seem to me to be a larger element than the solo tune.  Can it be said that the folk tunes taken from this are simply additives of one another, like Stravinsky when taking the tunes of Slavic and Russian folk culture and putting them into the Rite?  Can it be said that the embellishment of a tune is a complete tribute to the rhythm of the music, or is it a reflection of the text, of the performer and the background they bring to the performance, or even the improvisation of that melody?  I think of lyricism in this way when talking about early jazz.  There was something about Bessie Smith’s recordings that struck me as very lyrical as opposed to simply the combination of rhythms that could be produced.  I could hear the base of the tune in “St. Louis Blues,” and even though she would stray from this occasionally, the tune was recognizable and still may be for those most familiar with the piece. 

 

2)            Music in place is a way for a listener to put a foundation to the sounds they are hearing through the historical context of the creation of the piece.  It also helps to present the cultural reaction of the surroundings happening in history.  With the development of the Second Viennese School, music takes a different shape very deliberately, all the while keeping true to the system of form that Shoenberg would develop and flourish with Berg and Webern.  At the same time, Europe is changing during the late 1910s going into the 1920s and 30s.  With the end of World War I shows a different climate in Europe, and having cultural works change with that shows the significance of a great war. 

            Paris during this time frame is also a point of reference to the significance of music and place.  From the World’s Fair in 1889 to the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, music was affected by the turn of the century.  Art and music became much more about texture as opposed to theme or harmonic progression.  This can be seen in Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune, where one theme is presented in the opening by the flute that returns occasionally.  This theme is actually only seen again one full rehearsal measure later.  The clarinets and French horns respond to this with a second theme that is heard throughout the piece in certain points, specifically after the first theme.  These themes are not a complement of each other harmonically or rhythmically, so the connection between the two is primarily aural (Prelude score, in packet).  This pattern of compositional style shows how Debussy took the experience of gamelon music and brought it into the world of Western music. 

            Finally, the emergence of black culture in America during the first years of the 20^th century, especially in New Orleans and through the Mississippi River up into Chicago and even in parts of Iowa plays its role in the development of blues and jazz.  In America, the issue of race and racial equality was a very relevant topic and one that was interactive in many communities, especially in a city such as New Orleans, a melting pot of Spanish, French, African-American, and white communities.  With the revision of the Black Code, residents in New Orleans integrated even more into a Creole city.  This brought in the age of African folk tunes and spirituals with the brass band of Creole cultures.  With this, the emergence of what Jelly Roll Morton describes as a “Spanish tinge” is seen in the jazz styles of the 20^th century.

            When thinking of music and place, I think on the music of Louis Armstrong.  Would his virtuosity, which he picked up on his own (Friday lecture notes), have been recognized at such a level in Europe among the works of a symphony?  Perhaps if he was in England and was a trumpeter during the time William Walton was creating Belshazzar’s Feast, he would have been recognized.  The factor of improvisation is very deep in Louis Armstrong’s playing, and had he been anywhere else, perhaps his style would be different.  Certainly the song called “What did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?” would have been performed differently, especially when considering the film exposure Armstrong received as a continuance of racial stereotypes.

            As a musician, I think the influence of place has some significance.  I would say that time and people have another influence in many other ways, but where one is when they are inspired to make music in such a way says something about where they are in life. I know that growing up in Lutheran church communities and, later in my high school years, in rural towns has put folk songs and country tunes in my head much more prominently than those in the Decorah community, where I observe that much fewer people prefer to listen to country or folk music.