Woodstock

When I was teaching I'd often begin the first class session by asking each of the students to say their name, and tell one interesting fact about their life. When they finished and it was my turn to speak, I'd say my name and then reveal that I had attended the famous Woodstock music festival of 1969. This piece of information usually was met with disbelief and a touch of scepticism, and I would often hear the comment "you don't look like a hippie."

The 40th anniversary of the historic three-day music festival will be next year, so it is not a bad time to tell my Woodstock story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival

In retrospect, it is pretty amazing that my conservative parents allowed their 15-year old son to go there alone. I was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan and read that he was scheduled to perform on Sunday August 17th. I had seen the advertisement in the NY Times, and subsequently purchased my ticket by mail for the performances on that day only. The $8 ticket was a little on the expensive side, but rock concerts in general were pricey in those days. Given the lineup of artists scheduled to perform, it seemed like a no brainier.

Even before the music festival got underway, the news media made much ado about the enormous crowd of "hippies" descending on a small town of Bethal NY. The New York Thruway became a parking lot, and the overall handling of the event was beginning to look like a disaster.

But by Sunday the situation had changed. The first two days of the festival had turned out to be peaceful and orderly. The concerts were transformed into an open and free public event because the crowds had overwhelmed the security fence. Local officials were caught totally off guard, and were completely unprepared for the masses of people, which were estimated to reach 200,000. Yet even the local police conceded that everyone appeared to living up to their ideal of "peace, love, and happiness." No one had actually seen anything quite like this before. It was a social phenomenon, and it got the attention of the entire world.

I must have been very persistent. My parents finally gave in, and on Sunday morning my dad drove me up to the concert site just outside Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm. He let me out of the car and said that I should come back within a few hours. I quickly disappeared into the swarm of people.

As I walked down a farm road toward the outdoor natural amphitheatre the reality of the situation struck me. Or, I should say that the "unreality" of it hit me like a ton of bricks. There were swarms of young people, with long hair and 60's attire everywhere. It was a virtual city of alternative culture. And then, as I walked past two police officers who were politely observing the crowd, I broke into an uncontrollable laughter. It suddenly struck me that the new alternative society here was inverted. The "hippie" minority, which under normal circumstances would be very wary of uniformed policemen, was in this context an overwhelming majority. The police had no option but to tolerate things that normally would have been considered illegal in NY State. Things like drugs and public nudity were tolerated, and the police knew they couldn't do anything about it.

Still in disbelief and laughing uncontrollably, I walked right past the two policemen who were standing beside their cruiser and managed to say hello. They smiled at me and must have thought to themselves "This guy is on a really good LSD trip. Is he OK?" That thought made me laugh even harder. I walked on.

I strolled past some interesting sites, including an assortment of old school buses that had been colorfully painted and converted into roving hippie homes. Curtains hung in the windows, and aluminium stove-pipe chimneys sprung from their roofs. You could smell pot in the air. It was a hot humid day, and a nearby small pond was busy with nude bathers. It seemed clear that Woodstock was more than just about music.

I found my way to the open amphitheatre and entered near stage-left - not far from the front. Given the size of the crowds, I had a fairly good view of the stage. The music had not yet begun. There were endless announcements coming from someone on the stage. I think farmer Max Yasgur addressed the crowd. Huge speakers were mounted high on scaffolding and the sound could be heard quite well over the helicopters that would periodically come and go. I found a very small spot where I could fit and sit down, and joined the crowd as just another ant in the humongous ant-colony.

Sitting in the mud with 200,000 strangers in close proximity was an interesting experience. It was a mass of humanity, yet everyone seemed oddly pacified and dazed. No one talked. These people had been there much longer than I, and clearly looked worn from it. The sun was hot, there was not much food to go around, and basics such as toilets and drinking water were in short supply. It felt a little like being in a refugee camp, although I had no idea at the time what that was.

I noticed that a black market had developed - not for drugs since those were free to all - but for food, water, and cigarettes. Someone was trying to sell a watermelon for $5 (inflation adjusted, this would equate to $21.37 in today's dollars).

One of my strongest memories is of the persistent smell of mud. The crowds had turned what had been a grassy pasture into brown wet earth. My brand new red shirt and white pants quickly became torn and covered with it. There was no way of avoiding getting dirty, you just had to go with with the flow.

After what seemed like an endless wait, the music began. British blues singer Joe Cocker was going to perform, but his band started with a few warm up numbers first. I could see Joe Cocker very well, and he looked as if he was having convulsions. His arms would flail around uncontrollably in the air as he belted out his songs (35 years later I would learn that he was actually playing "air-guitar"). It was a good set, and it ended with his unique rendition of the Lennon-McCartney song "With a Little Help from my Friends." You can watch the performance on YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMq0iDX1yE&feature=related


After Joe Cocker performed the sky darkened, and the sound of thunder rumbled in the distance. The wind had picked up, and we could see that it was going to rain hard. People on the stage were frantically covering the microphones with plastic bags. It didn't look like I would be able to stay long enough to hear Jimi Hendrix, so I decided to return to my father who was patiently waiting by our gold Buick Skylark station wagon.

I never occurred to me that I wouldn't find my way back. I'm not sure how I navigated a crowd of 200,000 people on unknown turf and ended up back at where my father had left me. He seemed very relieved to see me, and wanted to "get the hell out of here." We picked up a hippie hitch hiker on his way downstate, who entertained us with his stories.

By the time I arrived home, I was exhausted and dehydrated. My clothing had been reduced to rags. But I was glad that my father drove me. He had some good stories to tell back at the office the next day.

My Woodstock experience has stuck with me. The concept of a large outdoor venue for music has always been intriguing. Pumping decibels of sound with powerful speaker systems to thousands of people who are communally sitting together in a natural outdoor amphitheater seems like a sensible thing to do. It is just the right setting for musical works of immense magnitude.

A piece such as the Universe Symphony by Charles Ives would be well-suited for this venue. The spacial elements he conceived but couldn't yet realize would work nicely with the audio technology available at a modern outdoor rock concert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_Symphony_(Ives)

The same could be said of the unfinished work Mysterium by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. At the head of the 20th century, he anticipated multi-media happenings with light shows, a hippie-like mysticism, and experimented with altered states of consciousness induced by chemical enhancement. Mysterium was planned to be performed outdoors to thousands of people in the shadows of the Himalayas over the course of seven days. Oh yeah, it would be followed by the Apocalypse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterium_(Scriabin)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin

Nearly forty years after the fact the vision of Woodstock and what it stood for lives on. There is now a museum, arts center, and 15,000 seat outdoor theater near the site where this historic music festival occurred. It's called the "Museum at Bethel Woods."

http://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/museum.aspx

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Minimalism Reconsidered

Labels are misleading.

For example, I see little or no similarity in what has been called Minimalism in the field of music and Minimalism in the visual arts. In my view, you can find elements in the music of Morton Feldman, Toru Takamitsu, and Anton Webern that share the Minimalist aesthetic of clean design, directness, avoidance of aperiodicity, embellishment, and noise. As different as these "pre-Minimalist" composers are from each other, any one of them could be a sympathetic companion to the Minimalist movement in art that began in painting and sculpture in the 1970s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism

But in the field of contemporary music, Minimalism has been a significant cultural event. Like it or not, the presence of Minimalist music has gone from experimentation by a few non-establishment downtown composers working in lower Manhattan, to the international musical mainstream in just a few decades. I’ve observed it first hand, and am not oblivious to this monumental shift in musical culture or the reasons behind it. In the interest of simplicity, I will limit my discussion to the primary American proponents of Minimalist music, although there is currently a thriving sub-category of composers labeled as “Eastern European Mystic Minimalists.” These composers include Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt.

I have known about Minimalist composers since the late 1960’s and early 70’s, when Philip Glass and his ensemble performed regularly in Greenwich Village. Tim Page, the music critic with the Village Voice, would often review these concerts at The Kitchen and at other small venues. Glass, was a Juilliard graduate who attended concurrently along side Joshua Rifkin, the well-known pianist, conductor, and musicologist. Glass, upon his return to NY from studies in Paris was looking for work. He ultimately supported himself as a plumber and NYC taxi driver while composing in his spare time. These side-line professions were later to become part of the Glass mystique.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Glass

In 1974, curious to learn what this music was all about, I purchased a ticket for what has since been called by John Rockwell (music critic for the NY Times) a historic concert. It was the first complete performance of Glass’s “Music in Twelve Parts.” The venue was Town Hall. This was the first time his music would be presented in an “uptown” venue (although technically it was “mid-town”). The concert was indeed a happening. The near-capacity audience was very different from the new music concerts I usually attended by ensembles such as “The Group for Contemporary Music” at Columbia University. These concert-goers were young and trendy, NYC hip, and looked ready and eager to hear something new and avant-garde. As I looked around the hall, most member of the audience had their eyes closed and seemed to be using the drone of the loud pulsating music as a way to facilitate self-induced meditation or trance.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3DE113DF936A35751C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Experiencing Minimalism through their ears was an eye opener for me. It surely was a way of listening that was very different from what I was accustomed to, and I was simply not able to experience the music as they did. Personally I found Glass’s music to be too loud, harmonically static, needlessly repetitive, devoid of form and content, totally lacking any semblance of melodic line, and missing even the most basic elements of contrast and forward harmonic motion. At the end of the evening, the ensemble ended together - cold, randomly, and for no musical rhyme or reason at all. Everyone was quite amazed (and in my case relieved) that the musicians could end at precisely the same time, since there was no other clear indication that the work had completed its course or come to a logical conclusion. Although the concert had gone on for many hours with the same monotonous drone, I couldn’t deny the cultural significance of the moment. It was perhaps THE inflection point of a change that would dominate the world of musical composition for the next three or four decades.

In America the battle between the dominant “isms” of the Schoenberg and Stravinsky legacies went well into the 1970’s, with Minimalism slowly but steadily making major in-roads as a major player (Remember that Stravinsky lived until 1971). In November of 1976 the Glass-Wilson opera “Einstein on the Beach” filled the Metropolitan Opera house for two sold out performances at a time when “serious” productions of operas by modernist composers was unheard of. Other Minimalist composers/performers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich were getting more attention too, and in time they made their way to major recording labels. But there was always serious friction between the academic musical community, and the band of renegade outsiders who the critics conveniently lumped together under the label “Minimalists.” They didn’t fit the mold of having a PhD and a university professorship. They did not descend aesthetically from either the Schoenberg or Stravinsky lineage. They were more akin to electronic rock musicians on a road trip than what the establishment considered as part of the standard profile for an American composer.

I remember attending a Terry Riley concert sponsored by the Fromm Foundation at Sanders Theatre at Harvard in the early 1970’s. The Fromm concerts at Harvard did (and still do) offer a diversity of musical viewpoints. The Riley concert was very well attended, but Earl Kim (a distinguished composer from the Harvard faculty) and his wife conspicuously stormed out of the hall about 10 minutes into the performance. I’m sure he knew quite well what Riley’s music would be like before attending, but he was making a strong visual and political statement by walking out in disgust. In his view (and by implication the view of the musical establishment at Harvard), this was not contemporary music, and perhaps not even music at all.

Jump ahead 34 years… Philip Glass has become the establishment. In 2007 he was invited to represent American composers at the re-dedication of Lincoln Center for a nationally televised PBS broadcast Live from Lincoln Center "Lincoln Center Special: A Gala Night at Alice Tully Hall." At that event he sat down at a Steinway grand piano to perform his solo Etude. I swear that he arpeggiated the same insipid nonsensical chords that I heard him play at Town Hall three and a half decades earlier. Glass (now with the aid of a cadre of assistants) has composed a large catalog of musical works for chamber ensemble, chorus, orchestra, and - according to his own words - “has written so many operas that he has lost count.” Glass has guest appeared on popular TV shows such as NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and made millions of dollars from movie scores, concerts, and recordings. He is in fact a household name, surpassing Bernstein or Copland, at least with the younger generation. In terms of public recognition and support, Glass has outpaced virtually all of his contemporaries in the field, and acquired a cult status usually associated with mega-pop stars. NY Times critic John Rockwell played a significant role in popularizing Glass.

Those are the facts. But should this cultural shift in music be considered a victory for Minimal-ism over the other “isms?”

Let’s shift gears a bit and talk about another composer often identified as a proponent of Minimalistic music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(composer)

In 2007 “Minimalist” composer John Adams delivered a speech at Paine Hall, Harvard. It was an acceptance speech for a distinguished music award presented to him by the university’s president. He read a section of his forthcoming book of memoirs and commentary on American musical life (“A Rhythm Among Harmonie”), and referenced his tumultuous years as a composition student at Harvard, and how he found the prevailing “isms” of academia in the 1970’s stymieing. He said “those were dark times.”

John Adams is not that much older than I, and our musical development, studies, and personal journey as students in Boston were nearly contemporaneous. We must have known some of the same musicians and teachers, and attended some of the same concerts. We were educated with a similar methodology and in a similar cultural context. He studied at Harvard with Kirchner. I studied at New England Conservatory and Brandeis with Martino and Boykan. At the core, we are both products of the same musical upbringing and social network.

When Adams referred to “those dark times” concerning Boston’s new music scene in the 1970’s, I had to think that we must have been on different planets. I found almost everything about contemporary music in the Boston of that era to be fascinating, exciting, and intellectually intriguing. Gunther Schuller was making history as President of New England Conservatory, the Boston Musica Viva regularly premiered new works by Boston-area composers, and other new music groups played a diversity of compelling works. Conard Pope and Rodney Lister had curated an innovative concert series of new music at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Great pieces were being written by composers who just happened to hold academic positions for their livelihood. While they may have worked at the one of many colleges, conservatories, or universities in town, they were serious composers first and foremost. I see nothing dismal or lacking in the music of Kirchner, Kim, Shrifrin, Boykan, Martino, Schuller… (and the list goes on). So I don’t quite understand what Adams found boring, lacking, oppressive, or lethal to his creativity. The Zeitgeist of that time was a good one, not evil, ominous, or dark.

If you live long enough, you will see history repeat itself. Now that Minimalism is the establishment, another disruptive style of music will likely ensue. I have listened carefully to the form of Minimalism that Adams has adopted, and heard it evolve over the years. I’m not sure that he still has a lot in common with Glass, Reich, or Riley. He is really a devotee of another kind of “ism” – that of Stravinsky. Although there certainly are a lot of repetitive patterns in Adams’ music, there are also meaningful chord progressions, a sense of musical form in the traditional sense, and at times a semblance of melody. He is willing to take chances and experiment. Adams, and many of the “neo-minimalists” have adopted the surface texture - the driving regular rhythm of Glass – and creatively adopted it to their own methods and style. He seems to have found his voice and niche in stage works. Yet, by riding the cultural wave of the Minimalist bandwagon, he has been able to gain the acceptance of a larger audience while striving to continue the tradition of Stravinsky’s middle period. There is nothing wrong with that. But I have always been wary of those who make pronouncements about moving on to the future while trashing where they came from.

Like Glass, Adams is now a member of the establishment too, although he’d prefer not to admit it. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2003, he emailed a reporter for the NY Times downplaying the significance of the distinguished award. He said “no composer of any value has won the Pulitzer in recent years.” He was apparently trying to distance himself from the entrenched composers of academia, which happen to include his own teacher Leon Kirchner. Yet, Adams could now easily find employment at any university he would want to teach at, and was on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory for a decade.

Today, in 2008 Minimalism in music is little more than a hollow buzz word. Composers have taken what they want and need from it, and moved on from there. A few composers have reacted by calling their music "Maximalist." Younger composers, like Boston’s own Michael Gandolfi incorporate elements of Minimalism in their unique style. In a work commissioned by the Boston and Atlanta Symphonies, Gandolfi’s “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” uses repetition in a manner similar to what Baroque composers did to articulate a pulse and set a clear harmonic rhythm. It is a monumental work, in sixteen movements grouped in three parts, lasting nearly seventy minutes. Clearly the application of Minimalist techniques has made an impact, and there are some striking examples of positive results in American music of the past few years.

But perhaps the seeds for Minimalism in music go back farther into music history. If you take for example the first prelude (C major) from Book I of JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the arppegiated chords bear a striking resemblance to the surface patterns of any keyboard work by Philip Glass. But there is so much more to Bach, and I suspect that his music will be long lasting and survive when labels such as Minimalism and Maximalism have been forgotten. From this perspective, repetitive patterns, pulsating rhythms, and the subjugation of melody is nothing new. Nineteenth century orchestral music is full of orchestral devices that predate and inspire Minimalist works written today. The list of early examples is lengthy. In this sense, music is coming full-circle again.

Like I said, labels are misleading.

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A letter to the New York Times

An article by Ann Midgette was printed in the NY Times in 1993 regarding the Pulitzer prize in music.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E6DB1138F93AA35757C0A9659C8B63

I wrote the following letter to the editor (although it was never published)...

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In the April 9th, 2003 edition of the New York Times, the article entitled Dissonant Thoughts on the Music Pulitzers by Anne Midgette poured fuel on the fire of an apparent controversy regarding the Pulitzer Prize in music. At the head of her article she states that “the Pulitzer Prize is known as one of the greatest honors of American journalism, arts, and letters. But not of American music.” I strongly disagree.

While the monetary aspect of the award is less than what someone would earn bagging groceries part-time at the local supermarket, for more than half a century the Pulitzer has stood as the single most important symbolic indicator of significant accomplishment in the field of music composition. As a public, we owe this respect to our composers, and should continue to recognize them each year in this manner.

Any annual award to a single composer with both national and international press coverage is bound to be controversial – but more from the inside than from the outside. How do you select a new work from only one composer each year to reflect the richness of our contemporary music? The award has in fact been presented to composers of a wide variety of musical styles over time. I can’t think of a more diverse list of composers. Historically the honors role includes household names like Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Ned Rorem, Gian-Carlo Menotti, William Schuman and Virgil Thomson. The list is also inclusive of composers of semi-popular music - such a Morton Gould, Wynton Marsalis, and more experimental practitioners such as Henry Brant. Now that John Adams - a minimalist composer with significant stature - has won the 2003 award, the Pulitzer in music has even more diversity, representation and legitimacy.

I am very puzzled and concerned that Mr. Adams, as represented by his quoted comments in the article, has attempted to devalue the Pulitzer Prize in music. He says “Among musicians that I know, the Pulitzer has over the years lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields like literature and journalism. Anyone perusing the list of past winners cannot help noticing that many if not most of the country's greatest musical minds are conspicuously missing." He goes on to say that “ ... most if not all of these genuinely creative spirits have been passed over year after year, often in favor of academy composers who have won a disproportionate number of prizes."

By implication, I interpret these comments by John Adams to mean that the Pulitzer doesn’t posses the glitz of the Hollywood Oscars, or the excitement of a pop artist winning a Grammy, because it also embraces the likes of Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, Roger Reynolds and Donald Martino. Common sense and artistic integrity say that we should not rule out anyone’s success. It would be an injustice if we were to transform the role of the Pulitzer Prize to exclude hard working composers who happen to be employed at a university. This would presumably apply to the music of Leon Kirchner (Mr. Adams’ teacher at Harvard), who won the Pulitzer in 1968 for his Third String Quartet.

There is a marked arrogance in Mr. Adams’s words and stance. He comes across as ungrateful about the award and negative about the work of his colleagues. If the Pulitzer has lost any of its prestige, it is because of behavior like this. John Adams is presumably at liberty to renounce his Pulitzer and send the money back to its Trustees.

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Millennium Musings

I discovered an old article of mine.

Apparently, years before the blogosphere was invented, I was blogging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere

Although the following essay was written nearly nine years ago, the circumstances are essentially unchanged...

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Millennium Musings
(January, 2000)

What actually happened during the last years of the 20th century in terms of “classical” concert music? What will the early 21st century have in store for the public, audiences, music ensembles, and composers in the new millennium? The beginning of a new century is an opportune time to take a snapshot of the contemporary music scene as it existed at the end of the century, and to postulate about some of possible directions that a future music may propel us in.

I have a personal stake in this musical future, since I am a composer. The monumental event of a musical tradition transitioning into a new century is something that really excites me. I will talk about music producers (a.k.a. composers), performers (a.k.a. musicians), and consumers (a.k.a. the concert going public).

A music tradition is made not by individuals, but by a collection of active participants in the commerce of a musical culture. As a composer, I supposedly have a unique role in the creation, direction, and influence of musical trends, patterns, and styles. From my vantage point, the musical scene today is in need of a major redefinition, reorientation, and rejuvenation. But, before we can discuss what music should be like in the 21st century, we need to look briefly at what happened during the last quarter of the now fading 20th century.

As a close observer of the musical trends and tendencies in American “new music” since 1975, I can say that pluralism was both the engine that drove musical activity and experimentation, and the reason why collectively, music composition has apparently lost steam as a vital art form. A composer, after WW2, would have belonged to one of two primary musical camps: Schoenbergian or Stravinskyian. This polarization, which today seems ludicrous, became entrenched in the infrastructure of higher music education and concert performance. Unfortunately, this initial cesium parted the waters of musical expression for many, and the inevitable seeds of musical disintegration were sewn. Many diverse and obscure schools of musical thought ensued, some interesting, some absurd. The events of 20th century music are well documented by musicologists, who have been able to observe, formalize, and sometimes fire the flames of the evolution and rapid ghettoization of an international new music culture – in “real time.”

At the end of the 20th century, audiences and composers alike could pick and choose from a wide variety of musical styles and modes of expression. This tendency has also been enhanced by the proliferation throughout the world of information and recordings about previously unknown musical traditions, and by cross-fertilization between classical and vernacular music venues. The richness of musical expression and the overwhelming quantity of this new and interesting music are the real story of the later 20th century. Not only could one metaphorically eat at any kind of restaurant, but also the fare was much more than simply Schoenberg or Stravinsky (Chicken or Beef?).

Digestion is a different matter however. As a student, I was overloaded by the vastness of it all, and I have witnessed the concert going public gradually become (even more) baffled and confused about new music. Their dwindling numbers at concerts are an indication of the systemic nature of the problem. There is an accompanying adverse affect from the loss of interest by the public: A lowering of musical energy, quality and standards amongst the music producers – the composers themselves. The wide selection of musical sub-cultures is somewhat synonymous with the cable station that offers a 100-plus viewing channels day and night– with nothing of real value on any of them. But, with so much music to choose from, why are we so musically deprived and impoverished?

The answer is complex, and the blame can not be directed toward any particular group. The tone of the rhetoric has intensified, and the theater of battle has expanded from a few uninsightful music critics, to an ever-growing number of composers competing for a limited resource of awards, commissions, the attention of a few sympathetic performers, and even a chance to utter verbal sound bytes on National Public Radio (NPR).

I recently just listened to an interview on NPR with a very successful American “minimalist” composer. He did not confine the explanation of his music to his own musical credo and rational, but went the extra mile to quite viciously attack the academic musical establishment for unilaterally preaching the party line of Arnold Schoenberg. He (the minimalist composer) said that both he and the public found 12-tone music “greatly unsatisfying.” It was almost as if he - now highly successful and part of the musical mainstream - wanted to expunge any remaining vestiges of 12-tone music that may still exist.

Now you should know where I stand. I am an advocate of the music of Schoenberg and of his students (actual or indirectly influenced). I am also an advocate of the late serial music of Igor Stravinsky. Much blossomed from Schoenberg and Stravinsky’s respective serial music periods. Their seminal ideas and aesthetic, while not fully in agreement with each other, represent the single most important development in music during the 20th century.

Personally, I can not understand why the aforementioned “minimal” composer on NPR (with a similar educational background as myself), would lump together the rich repertory and history of 12-tone and atonal music from our common collective musical tradition and simply label it as “unsatisfying.” I couldn’t disagree more! My only guess it that this particular sound byte strikes a knee jerk reactive resonant chord with the general public, and that this was an intentionally calculated comment intended to justify his own abandonment of complex music. I believe even the musically naive will sense the broad range of emotive power and artistic merit inherent in composers as diverse as Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, (late) Stravinsky, Sessions, Dallapiccola, Carter, Babbitt, Martino and Wolpe. I’ve never met anyone that has listened to a composition by Dallapiccola and found it “greatly unsatisfying.” While you may not like everything by all of these composers, you have to concede that serial music can be wonderful, elegant, and unique in the hands of a master musician.

The NPR sound byte battle is not strictly limited to composers exchanging torpedoes with one another. Musicologists are often soldiers in the war. On another, unrelated NPR radio program, an author of a recent book on Aaron Copland talked about Copland’s life and work. At one point, he played only a few seconds from of a piece out of Copland’s 12-tone period, at which point the musicologist immediately interjected and dismissed all of Copland’s serial music as an aberrant failure. He “excused” Copland for his lapse in artistic judgment, since 12-tone music – like Communism – was an idiotic rage of the 1950’s and 60’s that few composers could escape or evade. He added that two dominant totalitarian systems of the last century (12-tone music and Communism) were both proven wrong.

The analogy between Communism and 12-tone music is not new. It has persisted since the beginning as an easy way to make a headline, and stir up irrational hostile feelings toward serial music in general. Just recently, two composers were quoted in the New York Times making this same analogy, and reaping the self-serving short-term benefits of debasing their colleagues. The analogy also serves another function of creating an image of a few old, embittered, card-carrying 12-tone composers, persisting in their ill-fated musical ways regardless of the march of time, which has left them in complete isolation and disregard. While some composers may be old, if they are embittered, it is because of the McCarthy-like tactics often deployed by critics, musicologists, and unsympathetic self-serving composers who ruthlessly invalidate and annihilate their work.

So we see that the disintegration of music along many different party lines has created artistic friction and irrational hostility within the population of producers of music (i.e. composer political infighting). This struggle is magnified by the medium, usually a music performance organization under intense economic pressure to survive, and yet trying to keep music composition alive because they have a social obligation to do so. Traditional music organizations – symphony orchestras for example - are essentially hostile to complex music. New music is expensive to produce (requiring more rehearsals), and sometimes not well received by the public. The connection between the producers of music and the performers of music in many cases is strained by the economic implications of performing it with the investment in rehearsal time it requires. Hard pieces don’t get played, so there is regretfully a filtering and attenuation of the work and ideas by composers who choose to express themselves by composing music that is also co-incidentally expensive to produce. This results in a bias against complex music simply because it is difficult to perform. Simple music however is limited by its potential for depth and, as a result, is often artistically shallow.

The sorry relationship that producers of complex music can have with musical performers is well known, although this may be salvageable in the first few decades of the next century. However, the dysfunctional relationship between composers and their public has regrettably become socially ingrained, and is a major impediment to the natural flow of musical evolution. The lack of interest in new music in general affects the musical arts greatly. Even the minorities of composers that have achieved modest notoriety (but probably not basic economic viability - in most cases) are under-performed, under-valued, and generally ignored by the public. The public, confused by the mixed messages from a barrage of musical “isms” and suffering from music-information overload, is trying to take it in with a very limited budget of free time, and can’t adequately assimilate and process the music to their, the performers, or the composers, satisfaction.

There were a couple of “bad boys” of music composition in the 20th century that became very influential and controversial. These radicals often made their points in prose rather than traditionally notated music. In the later part of the century, anything and everything was attempted and common sense and fundamental musical ability often was discarded in the process. There was also a strong backlash to the silliness of these extremes, often resulting in an equally polarized and reactionary stance. The late 20th century revealed the New Romanticism, the New Simplicity, and the New Tonality. Most of this was an insipid rehashing of the clichés of old music, in a pitiful attempt to recapture once again the sentimentality that simplistic tonal music could provide. This movement – not yet dead - was reinforced by the strong academic influence of the academy which has always stressed the practices of traditional counterpoint and harmony as composition, and a public that found it easier to hear in the framework of a paradigm of music more closely associated with the Classical or Romantic era than their own.

Many may disagree with my particular views on contemporary music, but my observation about how it has gradually dissolved into its own ether at the end of the 20th century is pretty evident to anyone that takes the time to observe. What does this mean for serious concert music producers, performers, and consumers of the 21st century? Can it get any worse than it is currently? Is serious new music of quality a dead art?

There are some promising signs that a new culture of credible and sustainable music activity is upon us. Small, yet specialized contemporary music performance ensembles have sprung up in some cities, often with no or little subsidy. They are comprised of highly capable, dedicated musicians that make new music their religion. These islands of opportunity are not completely spontaneous, since they are often instigated by self-interested composers or composer-musicians. However, the quality of both the compositions and of their performances is exceptional. The numbers of these independent-performing organizations is growing. It has become a phenomenon.

Independently produced and distributed CD recordings have almost become the normal distribution method for new and experimental music. Amazon.com has begun selling independently produced CDs on their commercial web site thus equalizing the distribution advantage of the big-business mega-recording companies. Taking as a starting premise that the objective of CD distribution is not to get anyone rich, but is intended solely to communicate, promote, and propagate one’s musical ideas, then the goal of independent recordings has already succeeded. The ubiquity of low volume CD reproduction services, along with inexpensive ad hoc disk burning technologies, make low volume CDs on demand a viable micro-music-industry. The Internet and WWW will further enhance the information flow between music producers and consumers by allowing even the most obscure communities of niche music enthusiasts to exchange ideas, compositions, and recordings. New technologies are furthering the revolution. Already, sounds (.mp3) and scores (.pdf) can easily be downloaded from the web, often at no cost. The musical establishment is no longer needed to subsidize, legitimize, or scrutinize the producer of music.

As a composer, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of music, although my particular vision of 21st century music composition is possibly different than that of some of my colleagues. I encourage music producers (composers) to simply write the music they want to hear, and not to get embroiled in the politics, cultural noise, and obvious career competition that has been so destructive to the profession. I encourage music performers to take a chance on new music, not be driven by the bottom line or first impressions. And finally, I encourage – even challenge – the concert going public (consumers) to actively seek out new music and become involved with it emotionally and intellectually. Without the public, no creative music will survive – neither good nor bad.

I don’t want to leave the impression that composers think about these issues every time they sit down to write a note of music. Our egos are large, but our brains are not large enough to contemplate the inner workings of all the aspects of a new musical work in progress, and simultaneously triangulate the position of its cultural context and economic potential in the constantly evolving, vast musical repertory of mankind. We do take moments from time to time, usually between pieces, and often at demarcation points in history – such as the onset of a new century - to speculate about our role and place in the universe as thinking composers.

1/2000

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Toys

New ideas often originate on the West Coast. California has a history of trend setting and innovation, and toys are no exception.

My generation grew up with the Hula Hoop and Frisbee - both of which were popularized by California's WHAM-O toy company in the 1950's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_hoop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisbee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wham-O

Also popular in my time were Skateboards, and I had an early retail version of one. I gave up my aspirations to become a professional skateboarder when I landed flat on my face and broke a tooth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skateboard




But new toys are always being invented, and the latest seems to be the Japanese contraption called the Kendama. It's not new to Japan, where it is believed to have appeared in the Edo period (1603-1868). Historians think the top is derived form the 16th century bilboquet popular in France. It then migrated to Nagasaki Japan via the Silk Road trading route.

At first, it was adopted as a drinking game played by adults, where at each mistake a player was forced to take another sip of Saké.

Since then Kendama has as evolved to be a very serious sport in Japan, and it appears to have recently caught in a big way with American teenagers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendama

http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/virtual/kendama/kendama02.html


YouTube is filled with Kendama videos...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dlBMS388k

Joseph's Kendama arrived this week, and he quickly became addicted to it. All of his friends have one, and it seems to be more of a draw than even XBox 360.

Will Kendama become the next hula hoop, frisbee, or skateboard? I don't know, but it seems to have the attraction, youth-appeal, and potential.

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