One of the advantages of this blog is that it allows me to indulge in the news-pegless item. Those of us journalists who have a soft spot for obscure music, or who have even become leading experts in bodies of music few people have ever heard of, get frustrated waiting for the "news peg," the external event that justifies a subject to editors. When, after all, is there going to be an Ivan Wyschnegradsky concert in New York? How long will I wait to give my opinion of Ben Weber (1916-1979), if I am dependent on the prodding of external events? … [Read more...]

Well, the week before Christmas is a difficult time to blog, especially when my semester only ended six days earlier, and I had been prevented from Christmas shopping the last two weekends by a blizzard and cold, respectively. (My son's birthday is Dec. 23, too.) So I've been absent. And I'm not really the type to send out the obligatory Christmas greeting - just because it's obligatory. For the record, I am happy to express the usual lip service to peace on earth for us all, and all that. But I do have a triumphant bit of Christmas information … [Read more...]

1/1 is the unlikely name of a small but important journal published by Other Music, Inc., little known to the public but eagerly awaited and closely read by microtonal musicians. It's the most significant periodical devoted to the system of pure tuning known as Just Intonation - i.e., the practice of tuning pitches according to whole number ratios. And the current issue offers a cover article by LA microtonalist Bill Alves partly analyzing Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem. What's rare and exciting about this is that Twining's choral magnum opus … [Read more...]

A second thought about Berlioz. When we think of Brahms's life, we think of his works being championed by Joachim, Clara Schumann, Hans von Bulow. We think of Beethoven's aristocratic patrons begging him to remain in Vienna and pooling their resources to give him a salary. We think of Chopin and Liszt playing piano to entertain at aristocratic soirees. But when we think of Berlioz's life, it's of him consumed with scribbling newspaper reviews, writing about musical nonentities for money, forced to put together his own early performances without … [Read more...]

No one asked me to use the words "miserable failure" and "George W. Bush" in a sentence (I do it often enough without being asked - and look up "miserable failure" on Google if you don't know what I'm talking about), but I was asked to participate today in a "blog burst" for Beethoven's birthday. I don't have very original thoughts about Beethoven at the moment. Count Waldstein set the stage for a three-person Classical Era when he wrote to the young Beethoven, who was leaving for Vienna, "You will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of … [Read more...]

I first met Corey Dargel years ago as a student at Oberlin. He subsequently made a beeline to New York City, where he has quickly become a rising master of the postmodern love song, in the fine kidding-on-the-square tradition of David Garland. As prime example, he's just posted a new song, "Antidepressants," on his web page. After you've listened to that one, scroll down to find some songs from his new CD, cry those sweet sweet tears on out, and you'll hear where I think post-rock and post-classical may collide circa 2004 or so. Dargel has a … [Read more...]

A severe head cold has kept me MIA lately. It's subsiding, and I hope to be back up to speed soon. I did want to note the passing of Senator Paul Simon, one of the finest men in the U.S. Congress and the finest senator I've ever had the pleasure of being represented by - a man of honesty and a great friend to the arts. When he ran for president in 1987, those of us in Illinois who knew his quality were excited, but the rest of the country just made fun of his big ears and bow ties. They don't realize what, in their silly superficiality, they … [Read more...]

As I said in my first blog entry, the purpose of this blog is to entice people to send me information I'm looking for. It works beautifully. Publisher Joseph Zitt informs me that one can still order Robert Cogan's and Pozzi Escot's magnificent book Sonic Design privately from their web site, at http://www.sonicdesign.org/order_form_book.htm. There's also a workbook to go with it, which I'd never seen. Maybe I'll get to teach my Sonic Design class after all. Zitt, of Metatron Press, also lusts to republish Cardew's Stockhausen Serves … [Read more...]

I had opportunity this week to teach with a classic music book that I rarely get to use: Sonic Design (Prentice-Hall) by Robert Cogan and Pozzi Escot. Published in 1976, the book was an amazing and long-awaited achievement: a culturally neutral attempt at general, analytical musical principles. Starting with abstract, non-Eurocentric concepts such as pitchspace, contour, and density, and usually starting by graphing scale steps and rhythms onto graph paper, Cogan and Escot came up with methods for approaching music that worked equally well with … [Read more...]

The Noam Chomsky passage to which I alluded in my last blog entry is worth reprinting here, worth memorizing, in fact, and worth being plastered on a wall of every building in this American Republic: ...In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes … [Read more...]

Alan Licht, composer and critic, came to speak at Bard the other night. He gave as a lecture an article that he had written for the e-magazine Bumpidee, "Improvisation and the New American Century," and which you can read either here or here. His anti-Bush-imperialist comments merely echo what I've long believed myself, but I was struck by parallels he draws between the acquiescence of Congress today and the acquiescence of critics who glorify whatever the industry releases. Here, from the middle of the article, are the relevant … [Read more...]

Long-time electronic composer and general Downtown raconteur Tom Hamilton sends me an interesting fact in response to my perceptions of the guitar's takeover of the composing world: In 1995, an industry group called the Guitar and Accessories Marketing Association (GAMA), along with the NAMM and MENC, started a launched a program to train teachers to start guitar programs in middle and high schools. That group estimated that by 2001, over 200,000 students have learned guitar in school, and over 38,000 students bought their own guitar. They … [Read more...]

Something else I meant to add about my students and the piano: Perhaps it's just Bard culture, but I see many students today, perhaps a majority, coming to musical creativity from the guitar rather than the piano, as they used to, or any other instrument. This could have profound consequences. In the Renaissance, composers usually got their start as child singers. Baroque and Classical composers were often string players (Corelli and Haydn, the violin; Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, the viola). Romantic and modern composers were more often than … [Read more...]

Matt Wellins add his own words to my account of his postclassical approach to writing for classical instruments: Just wanted to clarify: The piano does speak to me as a cultural icon, though not necessarily one that reeks of "high European culture." As you said, it is very much in any number of different worlds. I think we even discussed several other composers in addition to Cage and Feldman today, I think Nancarrow and Zorn came up. But hell, any number of 20th century composers seem to have reinvented the piano, I can't believe Messiaen … [Read more...]

Speaking of the piano, I've been cleaning out my garage, and I found (among many, many other sentimental items you'd be grateful I'm sparing you) a cassette tape of the piano recital I gave as a high school senior, on May 18, 1973, at Skyline High School in Dallas. The program was ambitious, well over an hour, and, as you can see, studded with 20th-century American music, for which I was already a staunch advocate: Johannes Brahms: Rhapsody in E-flat, Op. 119 Robert Muczynski: Solitude " " : Night Rain " " : Jubilee George Rochberg: … [Read more...]

Somewhere between me and Matt Wellins lies the postclassical dilemma. Matt, you'll recall, is a student of mine at Bard, of aggressively postmodern tendencies. He writes mostly electronic music, with samples and environmental sounds: old recordings, noises outside his apartment, kids playing in Central Park, old TV cartoons. He thinks about the cultural provenance of each noise he includes, and is politically aware of the sonic associations he invokes. Now he's writing a piano piece, though, and having a predictable problem. The piano, to him, … [Read more...]

I mentioned awhile back Art Jarvinen's 24-hour piano piece. I said he was producing a one-CD excerpt of it, and he has, on Los Angeles River Records, and he sent it to me. The piece is called Serious Immobilities, which, if you're new-music literate, should bring a ready reference to mind: Erik Satie. "To play this motif for oneself 840 times in a row," Satie write in somewhat ambiguous French on a little scrap of music found after his death with the title Vexations, "it will be good to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the greatest silence, … [Read more...]

I'm teaching Bartok again. I use the little Erno Lendvai book that explains the "systems" with which Bartok allegedly composed. One is the "axis" system, which luckily has nothing to do with the "axis of evil," but is rather Bartok's tendency to equate four tonics separated by minor thirds; thus, the "tonic axis" of a particular piece might be C, Eb, F#, A, the subdominant axis F, Ab, B, D, and the dominant axis G, Bb, Db, E. This is especially clear in the piece I usually analyze, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The first movement … [Read more...]

If you find yourself in upstate New York this coming Sunday, I have a performance of my music at the Storm King Music Festival. Emily Manzo, a dynamite young pianist just a few years out of Oberlin, and with an abiding interest in the latest music, will play my solo piano piece Time Does Not Exist at 2:00 at the Ogden Gallery of the Museum of the Hudson Highlands in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. Other composers on the festival include Carman Moore, Stefania de Kenessey, Wendy Griffiths, Jonathan Hallstrom, Peter Kirn, Bruce Lazarus, Yuzuru … [Read more...]

Following up on a previous blog entry, I've received two reports of John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur, his new orchestra piece with the LA Phil premiered at the Disney Center, which was to be Adams's first foray into the alternative system of tuning known as just intonation. According to one third-hand rumor, there wasn't enough rehearsal time to deal with the tunings, and the piece was played in conventional tuning. However, according to a more official report I received, this wasn't quite true. Finnish composer Juhani Nuorvala subsequently … [Read more...]