Totalistically Tenney

[Chirping of crickets; in the distance, the wail of a coyote is heard.]

Well, the most intriguing aspect of these most recent articles, for me, is that the music can actually be *heard.* I don't know how that is going to be done at time of publication (a CD, a web link?) or perhaps a web reprint, but it really does bring this important study to life... for me anyway.

yeah kyle, we can't exclaim "i'm learning! i'm learning!" every time you post. sheesh. =P

honestly, these kinds of posts are my favorite thing about your blog. if i don't comment, it's because i've been stunned into meditative silence. (hmm... you'll never believe that, will you?)

KG replies: Oh, Andrea, you always make me lol. I always brace for dissent; normally, the word "totalism" alone is enough to spur a torrent of at least skepticism, if not abuse. And I was hoping some Tenney aficionado would write to tell me what I'm missing with Tableaux Vivants. I'm kicking myself for not having analyzed it while Jim was around to answer questions.

Okay, Kyle, here's some token skepticism for you:

If Kyle Gann, foremost chronicler of the rise of totalism, listens to a piece and isn't able to tell "that it is really not postminimalist at all, but rather classically totalist" until he studies the score, is it really totalist? What's the point of having a name for a genre if you can't tell by listening to a piece which genre it falls into? Isn't genre categorization about grouping pieces into groups based on how they sound, not how they're constructed?

I'm not actually challenging the existence of "totalism" or "metametrics" or "brain-hurty-minimalism" or whatever we want to call it. In a piece like Michael Gordon's "Trance," for instance, it's very clear that part of the point is that there are a bunch of different things going on that are regular, but that they don't fit together in the neat way we're accustomed to, and yet the combined effect still works. Part of the fun of listening to the piece is mentally switching around from meter to meter.

So what do you do with a piece that looks Totalist on paper but doesn't actually produce the aesthetic effect that Totalism produces? "It's somewhere inbetween" is probably a perfectly fair answer, but I'm not sure.

I'm reminded of a great Neil Gaiman line from _The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish_. In it, the brother threatens the sister that if she doesn't do what he wants he'll "tell Mom you're secretly fat." Can a piece be secretly Totalist?

And for the token abuse: your mother dresses you funny.

KG replies: "Isn't genre categorization about grouping pieces into groups based on how they sound, not how they're constructed?"

Good lord, whoever said that? Who does musicology based on how pieces sound? If that happened, wouldn't Arvo Part suddenly be a Renaissance composer? Now that I've realized how Tableaux Vivants works, I hear it very differently, and, in fact, much more accurately. Part of the way I heard it before was based on facile misperceptions that my analysis of it has helped clear away. Hopefully, my talking about it will help people fit it more appropriately into the musical discourse. And as an erstwhile music critic, I am the last person on earth to entertain an argument that the way a piece of music is talked about shouldn't influence the way it sounds. I think far too much emphasis is put on the hypothetical, tabula rasa, out-of-context perceptual experience that doesn't really exist.

Or to misquote Charles Ives, "My god, what has sound got to do with musicology?"

Well, this Tenney piece certainly doesn't repeat in the kind of obvious way that would lend one to immediately term it a "minimal"-type work ("normal" or "post"). However, is it not true that La Monte Young, and certain other rather "static-sounding" works are referred to as "minimalist" in some circles? So, therefore, perhaps the Tenney is just a particular branch of "minimalism"??

Yeah, clearly what I was proposing doesn't really hold up under much scrutiny -- I warned you it was "token skepticism" :)

Serialism has a similar situation -- we draw a distinction between serialist modernism and non-serialist modernism, but clearly most people can't hear the row going by. I like the story of how Henry Brandt apparently had an ongoing challenge that he'd be willing to be somebody money that he could write a serialist piece and a non-serialist piece at the person taking the bet wouldn't be able to tell which one was serialist when he listened to it -- apparently nobody ever took him up on his offer.

I do think you go a little bit too far in saying "who does musicology based on how pieces sound," but it may be that you overstated your position because you were provoked. The fact that Part "sounds" a lot like a Rennaisance composer is pretty important to the aesthetic that he's cultivating.

Your point about the mythical tabula rasa listening experience is pretty important, and having it stated so concisely was alone worth having provoked you. But in addition to knowledge of the internal structure of the piece, our knowledge about the way other pieces sound, and how this piece compares sonically to how other pieces and things sound, is crucial to the non-tabula-rasa experience. I think sonic inertextuality is an integral part of good musicology. Without knowing Palestrina we can't really understand Part; without knowing the sound of the machine age we can't really understand Ballet Mechanique. The fact that after analyzing the piece you can now hear it as a Totalist piece actually reinforces the idea that the way a piece sounds is important to genre grouping, but you remain correct that even if you still heard it the same way it would still be reasonable to relabel it as Totalist--the way something sounds isn't the _only_ consideration for genre grouping.

hey kyle

i hope you remember me - we met at dartington in devon where i was a student of bob gilmore's studying jim's theory and music.

anyway, it may be only a little relevant here, but i thought you'd like to know i recently generated new tenney pieces spectral variations for player piano (from spectral canon for conlon nancarrow). they're really very beautiful.

you can hear the tests and read a little blurb here:

http://www.rhizomecowboy.com/spectral_variations/

ciarán

KG replies: Hi Ciarán, nice to hear from you. I'll take a listen.