Music in Trains

This post is an open letter of sorts to David Tomasacci, composer and theorist, in response to his request for my thoughts on how a particular new music ensemble could be improved. However, I will make my recommendations in a generalized fashion and refer to particulars only infrequently.

1. Defining “New Music”

“New Music” has been loosely used to refer to music written as long ago as the turn of the twentieth century. I would suggest that music that has been around longer than it takes a person to be born and earn a doctorate in new music composition can simply not be called “new.” Pick a cut-off date and try to stick to it. How about even as many as 25 years ago? Even with such a loose definition of “new,” try to include more music written in the past five or ten years such that it occupies a majority of the space on the program.

I realize that much of the music written between 1920 and 1980 tends not to get played very much because it’s too “modern” to be classic and too old to receive the boost of a premiere. One could argue that this music has failed the test of time, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt and suggest audiences haven’t heard enough of this music to make it familiar. And yet, this still does not mean we should refer to it as “new music.”

2. Plan on Variety

Within the great variety of new music, there are clear trends and “schools” of composing. For the simple sake of giving exposure to a broad range of new music, why program several pieces that are in many ways similar?

More importantly, it’s tiring to listen to a lot of the same thing. I love Beethoven, for example, but it’s very difficult to listen to more than one of his quartets or sonatas on a single concert. More than two pretty much kills the evening for me. Perhaps one of the most tiring experiences can be an entire evening of only one composer or very similar composers. Given all of the variety available, why not program a balanced and contrasting concert?

3. Local New Music

Supporters of new music in the past were in many ways local. Given the number of composers today, there is no reason that new music could not still be primarily local. Granted, the internet gives us wonderful access to music from around the world that we may not otherwise encounter. And yet, why not support local composers as much as possible?

A local new music ensemble—i.e., one that does not travel—could really be a driving force behind the growth and support of new music. Composers generally do not make it big on a national or world scale before doing well locally, except for those who are the exceptional one-in-a-million. This could really be a compounding force for new music as more composers find support locally, resulting in more new music gaining recognition and acknowledgment.

4. The Audience’s Timing

Modern concerts of “serious” music from any time period are generally structured in similar ways. The two halves of the concert generally feature two or three pieces each, only one of which is a “major” work. Overall, the concert is likely 1.5-2.5 hours, including intermissions and breaks. This works well because it plays into how long an audience can sit comfortably with rapt attention. Why would a new music ensemble think that an audience would want to sit longer? Or listen to music during the intermission? Or otherwise have their sensory inputs filled to the limit and beyond?

This assumes that the music is the only focus. Another model could be that of dinner and music. The divided attention that the dinner requires could allow for more music. I think the same thing is true for all performances. I can listen to jazz music at a bar or club for hours on end, but put it on a stage and I can only listen to so much.

5. Intrigue, Don’t Alarm

I don’t think that it is any (or at least most) new music ensemble’s intent to alienate the audience. It’s a fine line between broadening an audience’s horizon or making a philosophical statement and simply pushing the audience away. I don’t think this issue necessarily even ever involves the music itself. I see a lot of new music ensembles try to catch audiences off-guard with performance logistics such as lighting, timing, etc. that deviate from concert norms. Do we really need or want to have audiences feel uneasy during performances of new music? Isn’t it enough that they are listening to new music?

I’ll also note that it is the philosophical intent of some composers to alarm their audiences in a very real sense. There will likely always be a market for this, but it should be no surprise if it drives away a large part of an audience that may otherwise be interested in new music.

Tid-bits

It’s been my impression that “new-music-black” references the Avant-garde of the mid-twentieth-century more than some want to admit. The professional ensembles that specialize in new music that I see generally dress in a trendy, clean fashion. That often includes jeans, but need not do so. The familiarity of jeans is welcoming to audiences, but the neatness and trendiness generally makes a clear separation from performers and audiences. “New-music-black” is sometimes just a bit ominous.

Also, I suspect that the audience we want to attract for new music ensembles is accustomed to the professionalism of the symphony or local chamber groups that have been around for quite some time. That means program books have to be clear and engaging, posters have to be sharp and well-made. I truly believe that professionalism could easily put a new music ensemble on par with any other local ensemble. Audiences want to know they can expect good things.

Concluding Thoughts

I decided to go forth with publishing this as is, even though I suspect I may have further thoughts down the road. I would also like to see any responses to the ideas listed above that I can incorporate. I tried to make this as general as possible, but I do suppose there will likely be exceptions.

Thoughts?

This is the second post in a series addressing the idea of a ‘composition app’ and, more specifically, Joseph Freeman’s recent opinion pieces in the NYTimes: “Compose Your Own” and “Compose Your Own, Part 2.” The first post, “Composition? There’s an App for That… (Part 1)” involved the issue of sequence in music. [Note: While I initially had other topics I wanted to address, I will most likely end with this post.]

Audience-to-Artist Conversion

Freeman is driven by his desire that “everyone could share in this experience [composition] that I find so fulfilling” because he believes that “all of us are musically creative and have something interesting to say.” However, he laments that so few actually compose music despite increased music consumption. He cites the NEA 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, which found that only 12.7% of American adults play a musical instrument at least once each year. Freeman reasonably assumes (although it was not part of the survey) that those who compose would be fewer.

What Freeman does not seem to note is that this is the highest rate of participation among the performing arts. Only 2.1% of adults participate in dance related activities in a given year and merely .8% participate in non-musial theater (.9% participate in musical theatre). Individual visual arts fare little better with only, for example, 9% who paint/draw/sculpt, although the overall participation in visual arts appears to be higher with 6% in pottery/jewelry, 13.1% weaving/sewing and 14.7% photography/movies. Furthermore, creative writing holds at 7% despite the fact that most adults can at least compose in English.

What is it that keeps an audience member from becoming a participant? Given the statistics for other, non-musical artistic endeavors, the lack of participation in music appears to not merely be an issue of being too difficult for the layman to approach. Most Americans can effectively use the English language and understand what many words mean and yet they do not use this knowledge toward creative or artistic ends.

Denatured Musical Language

And yet, Freeman’s solution to increase audience-to-composer conversion was to simply denature composition into a pseudo-visual/auditory task of piecing together blocks of musical gestures in a web-based platform called Piano Etudes. The approach resembles Earle Brown’s Available Forms I. However, the ‘composer’ need not read music, given that all of the musical fragments are represented visually by pseudo-registral/durational notation.

Western musical notation has been a long time in development. However, the more-or-less standardized notation of the modern era is hardly an obvious choice for the music it is employed to represent. For example, most of our modern music relies on equal temperament (i.e., all adjacent tones are equivalent). And yet, it hardly appears that the interval between D-sharp and F-flat would sound the same as E-flat and E-natural despite the equivalent aural result.

One solution to represent modern music would be a graphic notation where notes can be plotted against an x-axis representing time and a y-axis representing pitch. The visual representation would be easily understood as analogous to the aural realization. Freeman uses precisely this notation.

While this approach has its advantages for visual representation, it also lacks in its convenience for reading. The standard five-line staff groups pitches and allows us to easily recognize pitches in reference to a fixed point. It becomes difficult to maintain a reference point on an equally-spaced graph across groups of 12 lines.

Need Music Participation be User-Friendly?

Perhaps one of the most unfortunate cultural shifts in the past century was the move away from the ubiquitous teaching of our children how to read music. In years past, such knowledge could be assumed and would allow for the participation in amateur performance, composition and the like that is not approachable by those with little to no knowledge of the musical language.

And yet, I also do not think that familiarity with the musical language would result in any more participation. Given the rates of participation across all of the Arts, I believe we are in a crisis of leisure. Average Americans are more likely to consume art than make it.

The question of whether it is worth making music more user-friendly seems to hinge not on those who do not currently participate and are unlikely to start, but rather on the efficacious nature of musical notation for those who would otherwise be currently involved. If I’m right about that, then I would suggest we are right on track. Experiments with other methods of representation don’t hurt, but we should not kid ourselves about increasing Arts participation by dumbing-down its means.

Via the twittersphere:

@fEARnoMUSIC: Hey composers! Please don’t put bowings in unless you have played the instrument you are bowing for for at least 30 years. Thx! Mwah! Luv u!

@ElissaMilne: Really?! (re no bowings!) I’m assuming you mean up/down indications, not all slurring?!!

@harryfiddler: Articulation, yes. Bowings, no. Unless you want a particular effect, in which case you get a string player to help you.

@harryfiddler: I guess it’s like fingering on a piano? You wouldn’t presume to dictate fingering, although you do indicate articulation.

@fEARnoMUSIC: Yes, I’m talking about up/down bow indications. Let us figure out our own bowings based on your articulation/dynamic markings.

So, is it really so bad for composers to mark bowings?

I can understand that string players will undoubtedly have more familiarity with what is comfortable or familiar than non-string-playing composers. Surely, putting bowings in scores just for the sake of thoroughness (or whatever else) without caring much about any particular outcome is overkill.

However, I’m intrigued by @harryfiddler‘s comparison to fingerings on a piano. Is it true that one “wouldn’t presume to dictate fingering”? Schenker’s Art of Performance describes a variety of ways in which performance issues can relay interpretive information and may therefore may facilitate a more accurate conveyance of a composer’s intent (supposing an appropriate interpretation). Schenker’s editions of the Beethoven piano sonatas are not merely clean copies; they are interpretations. Fingerings matter because they can facilitate the portrayal of grouping and signaling information to audience members (as my Keyboard Harmony students are [hopefully] well aware).

Are not bowings akin to fingerings in this sense? The selection of bowings is an interpretation of sorts. If a composer puts in bowing markings that seem unnatural to a string player, could it sometimes be that the string player simply does not understand the music the way it was intended? I have no doubt that unnatural bowings may actually hinder an accurate portrayal, despite the intentions of the composer. And yet, is it so awful for string players that they do not wish to even try the bowings suggested by a composer “unless you have played the instrument you are bowing for for at least 30 years”?

As the academic year comes to a close, I realize it has been a quite while since I have written a post. Initially, I thought I would just share some fun music-generating web-links that I ran across:

• http://balldroppings.com/js/ (my personal favorite)
• http://www.incredibox.fr/
• http://www.optuswhalesong.com.au/
• http://www.whitevinyldesign.com/solarbeat/ (thanks to Erin Gamble!) (not really composition per se, but it is fun…)

But then I got to thinking about the music-making involved and started asking myself questions such as “What does it to take to make an application that can generate more-or-less pleasing music regardless of musical ability on the part of the ‘composer’?” That’s just about when I began reading Jason Freeman’s NYTimes opinion piece “Compose Your Own, Part 2” and its prequel “Compose Your Own.” This led to a number of other questions that I will address in separate posts in the upcoming week.

The ‘Building Blocks’ of Music?

As I pondered what makes composition apps work in a musical sense, my attention was drawn to the issue of sequence or—perhaps more appropriately—the lack thereof. The composer/designer of the app relinquishes the decision-making power over the order of musical events and must therefore accommodate the potential musical outcomes. Each app is designed in such a way that more-or-less pleasing music will result regardless of the actions of the user.

Such an approach to composition is by no means novel. In many ways, these apps conceptually resemble Earle Brown’s Available Forms I, in that the lines between audience, performer and composer are blurred by giving more responsibility for the sequence of musical events in the final musical product to someone other than the initial composer (Überkomponist?). In this sense, the initial composer has produced musical ‘building blocks’ that may be put together in any ‘legal’ (i.e., permitted by the rules of the initial composer) way such that the result will always be effective.

Freeman’s app is perhaps the most clear realization of this conceptual approach. He denatured composition into a pseudo-visual/auditory task of piecing together blocks of musical gestures in a web-based platform called Piano Etudes. Unlike Brown’s piece, however, the ‘composer’ need not read music given that all of the musical fragments are represented visually by pseudo-registral/durational notation.

Beyond Musical Sequence

The simplistic impression suggested by the ‘building block’ analogy is perhaps misleading. Much Western music written before the twentieth century has some significant sequential component that cannot be arbitrarily dismissed. An obvious example might include the so-called ‘sonata form,’ with the resolution of secondary material in a principal key area upon its return. In any other sequence, it would simply not be a sonata (especially by definition, although the musical impact would also be lessened).

Even the popular music of earlier times had specific sequential determinants. A performer could not simply piece together the various phrases from a Baroque dance suite and hope that the outcome would make sense. Rather, the harmonic and cadential schemata require accurate sequencing. This differs greatly from modern popular dance music. If there happens to be a differentiation between ‘verse’ and ‘chorus,’ the order of presentation likely makes little difference. Even more explicitly sequence-free is the product of the live DJ that combines various repetitive patterns in overlapping layers with other musical gestures that need not suggest any particular musical event.

The composition of musical fragments that can truly go in any order is an entirely different matter.

Non-Sequential Music and the Audience

Music that can come in any sequence must essentially be more-or-less effective regardless of when the audience begins listening to the materials. In this sense, the listening should be able to begin at any point. An audience member could theoretically walk in during the middle of a performance and still appreciate the music because any component can sound like a ‘beginning’ just as much as an ‘ending.’ That is, no component of the music will rely on any previous component and can thereby serve as an entry or exit point to the audience’s attention.

This seems to have great implications for keeping an audience in their seats according to the traditional model. Part of the value of sitting through an entire classical symphony, for example, is hearing the logical conclusion of that which comes before. Missing some earlier portion of the music may preclude appreciation of a later portion. Therefore, rapt attention is incredibly useful, if not necessary. If there is no sequence to be perceived, is such rapt attention the most useful audience model? And yet, much can be appreciated in each new performance of such a work.

As many new music ensembles seek to maintain or increase audiences, one notable trend is the shifting of attention away from the music. Such ensembles play in bars or clubs where talking and mingling is not only accepted, but also encouraged. Concerts are paired with dinners or other artistic endeavors that deserve their own attention. Music is no longer the focus at such events, so much as is the sensory experience.

In a way, this also reflects popular consumption. Students listening to their iPods between classes are by no means paying rapt attention to the music. Music is everywhere and paired with every sort of experience from movies to museums, elevators to telephones, and the like. Even classical music on NPR is often transformed into ‘background’ music that can be entered into or exited from with ease. Without understanding the logic and sequence of the music, it too becomes non-sequential.

Could it be that listening habits are changing to better appreciate the music? Does the music change to meet the listening habits? It’s hard to know for sure, but musicians and music advocates alike must take these issues into consideration.

Sequence vs. Non-Sequence

I will not suggest that either sequence-dependent or non-sequential music is somehow superior [I definitely enjoyed BallDroppings!]. Rather, I merely want to examine the related issues. However, what I will end with is an interesting note from the results of Freeman’s project. He allowed users to submit ‘compositions’ to be judged (by himself). The winning ‘compositions’ would then be prepared for performance and recorded (you can hear the results in the NYTimes article).

Two interesting features emerged in the winning ‘compositions’: 1) minimalistic repetition; 2) goal orientation. On the one hand, this could simply reflect Freeman’s tastes as a composer and audience. However, the comments of the ‘composers’ were also rather revealing in these respect:

“I’m interested in patterns in nature, and I was thinking about them when I composed the etude. A pattern is a sequence that repeats in time, space, or both. Because our world is finite, patterns must have boundaries. What does the edge of a pattern sound like? What about the boundary between related but different patterns?”

“I began with what I felt like were the more ‘pop’ elements of the score and created a loose musical narrative around those ideas.”

“I organized the material to create shifting states of rhythmic and harmonic tension within an overall hypnotic, pensive space. My intention was to allow this ebb and flow of tension to gradually unwind into a closing series of calming, pacific breaths.”

“I actually took a course from John Cage in the ’60’s at UC Davis, and am familiar with such ‘alternate’ forms of composition. … The choices were made with an aesthetic in mind — definitely not aleatoric!”

It is intriguing to me to see these ‘composers’ describing the opposing forces of order and chaos, sequence and non-sequence as they composed. They were interested in the moods created by repetition and yet were driven to seek some goal. There seems to be a satisfaction in both the appreciation of a single item in detail just as there is in recognizing global relations over the scale of a composition. Semper idem, sed non eodem modo (always the same, but not in the same way), invoking the memory of Schenker.