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Dear editors of High Fidelity Magazine,

This contribution is written in response to Professor Babbitt’s article “Who cares if you listen?” published by your magazine back in 1958. The essay, written in a serpentine, yet precise style, makes the argument that composers of “serious”, “advanced” music should withdraw into the carefully-barricaded and isolated walls of academia. Only there, among peers and colleagues in field of studies such as mathematics, physics, and philosophy, would they be able to focus on their creative art, which very few outside academia would ever be able to decipher, understand, and appreciate.

I beg to differ!!

While I find that the argument being made is questionable for numerous reasons, I also find the logic behind it dead wrong:

1. The analogy to Sciences, is–at best–a gross, inaccurate approximation;
2. The collaborative dimension of the creative process is bafflingly ignored; and
3. The rationale that analytical aspects in music surpass the emotional responses is so inadmissible that I am certain it was made in a moment of mental aberration and “intellectual stupor”.

Scientific isolationism.

Babbitt writes

“The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music, to the extent  that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been even less extensive than his background in other fields. But to this, a double standard is invoked, with the words music is music.”

First of all, contrary to Babbitt’s assertions, applied science does–even in a remote manner–have solid and tangible connections to actual everyday applications. The application of science principles and scientific knowledge to practical problems is the ultimate goal of scientific studies. Artificial intelligence, engineering physics, environmental technology, optical engineering, nanotechnology, quantum computing are all disciplines thriving to transfer scientific theoretical approaches to physical environments.

The argument that certain branches of sciences (commonly referred to as fundamental science, a distinction Babbitt fails to make) are only concerned with the study of basic objects and forces, with less regard to practicality, is not pertinent here because of the very nature of the subject matter being studied. Unlike science, where objects and events being studied are NOT created by the scientist, music is indeed created by the composer, whether directly or not.  Therefore, the scientific establishment can, as Thomas Kuhn indicates, cloister itself “from the demands of the laity and of everyday life.”¹  That option is not available for a composer.

Furthermore, as Leo Treitlet points out:

“ …music has always been, in some measure, a mode of discourse among specialists… If this seems to be more the case today, when composers discuss one another’s music without having heard it, the change is only one of degree.”²

Composers and audiences have gone different directions not because contemporary composers are pioneering and innovative, but because of the experimental dimension of their creations (let’s face it, which would you rather listen to after a hard day at work: Schoenberg and Cage; or Mozart and Verdi?). If any analogy is to be made in between Music and Science, I would invite Professor Babbitt to consider the following: the history of Science indicates that, with most experiments, when it has been shown beyond doubt that the experimentation had not succeeded, it is to be abandoned and dropped.

May I remind Professor Babbitt that it was a scientist, lead engineer at Lockheed Skunk Works, and Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society who originated the expression “Keep it simple stupid”³ (not to be confused with “Keep it simple, stupid”, with a comma).⁴ It was also a scientist–but also an artist/musician, Leonardo da Vinci–who uttered the words “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Rather than admitting the failure of their experimentations, modern composers opted instead to blame the audience and its lack of appreciating the self-professed significance and artistry of the work. Dear Professor Babbitt, persisting in claiming that right is wrong and wrong is right, demonstrates a sanity issue, not one of innovation.

Music, a collaborative art

Music as a form of art is a fundamentally a collaborative enterprise. The composer’s contingency on the performer, not as a mere interpreter, but as a co-creator, cannot be ignored. That is the primary reason that no two performances are similar. Music, defined as “an artistic form of auditory communication,”⁵ doesn’t exist per se until it is played. One might even “play the devil’s advocate” by adding that music is only music when music is being played and performed. It is not before, and it is not after. Musical notes jotted down on paper do not constitute Music; and while a trained musician could still read them and imagine what they would sound like, it would remain an internal process, individually and uniquely experienced.

With the performer being the medium, I am tempted to push the reflection even further by asserting that the listener is also a component of the creative process–which is precisely what makes for the unicity of each performance…even though the pieces to be performed and the performers might be the same. Who can forget the 1989 performance of Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” in Berlin conducted by Leonard Bernstein, in which the word freude (“joy”) was replaced by freiheit (“freedom”)…a consummate exaltation of liberation.

Music, a medium for human expression

In considering that Music is a conduit form for human expression, one must contemplate the truth that modern composers have been unsuccessful in communicating on a deep-rooted emotional level. End of discussion.

By relying quasi-exclusively on mathematical algorithms and relationships to originate quintessential elements of his art, Babbitt de facto hands over sovereignty over his music. By trusting his time-point system to determine fundamentals such as pitch, rhythms, intervals, and dynamics, he foregoes any possible human interference down the road.  If he were to listen to the piece after it is thoroughly composed and his instinct or taste dictates that such or such change is to be made, the option, out of intellectual integrity, is NOT available to him unless he changes his algorithms, or abandons his formulas.

Is Music to be felt, or to be analyzed?

At the risk of infuriating composers, scholars and musicologists, I would venture the premise that analyzing music is a process of gross simplification. Just like spoken language, music analysis carries within itself the idea of thought simplification. Let’s consider the following: the notion of “putting ideas into words” really means nothing more than simplifying thoughts to the point where they can be understood. Very similarly, while dissecting a composition into its core elements might shed a light into some intellectual aspects of the piece, it would, by the same token, keep us in the dark as far as other non-necessarily tangible elements. I am not discounting the importance of analyzing a piece per se, and I willingly admit that at times, information on the overall structure of a piece would certainly allow for a more informed “appreciation”, but even the best of analysis won’t be able to explain that emotional connection one might have with a piece. Music is just a little more complex, intricate, and more multi-leveled than analysis could possibly ever explain. When listening to an intricate passage of counterpoint in one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, is it not acceptable to simply be absorbed or “swept away” by the music?

The insidious proposition that understanding music is a matter of discovering the rules governing its composition is ludicrous. One doesn’t need to know when a mode mixture is taking place to be moved by the sound of music. One does not need to be aware of the composer’s departure from a typical harmonic progression to be affected by it. One doesn’t need to know that a motet is isorhythmic to truly enjoy it. The effect is the same with or without the prerequisite knowledge.
Bombay Jayashri Ramnath, a Carnatic musician based in Chennai, sums up this point of view beautifully in an article written for The Folio:

“The lay listener may not be able to hear which instruments are playing, or which pitches are used. Yet, he or  she may have no problem appreciating the music as a whole. An experienced listener, on the other hand, may  be able to transcribe every note, but might still be at a loss to understand why the music is so pleasing to listen  to even for the time!”⁶

The power of music to change lives transcends mere analysis, as demonstrated in the case of well-known author William Styron, who suffered from clinical depression. On the night he intended to take his life, he happened to watch a videotape of a play that was set in a music conservatory. As he recounts in his book “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness”, a “sudden soaring passage” from the Brahms Alto Rhapsody “pierced [his] heart like a dagger” and instantly rekindled his joy in life. We will presume that the transformative and healing aspect of the Brahms trumped the compositional techniques “behind the scenes”–even though they indeed contributed to the overall effect of the work.

I commend and credit Professor Babbitt for his courage in stating his convictions, but I respectfully disagree with his logic and fear that his argument is a result of bitterness and frustration. The current state of disconnection in between composers and audiences is not to blame the audience’s inability to comprehend the music it is being served, but rather the composers’ impotence in creating serious classical music that can sustain the test of critics while still retaining a tasty artistic value. They have simply failed in delivering genuine material capable of causing emotions to well up within their audiences. They fell short in creating from the heart and delivering to the heart. They flunked the test of deriving intense pleasures from their listeners. (Here, let me disavow any accusations of anti-modernism; I applaud many 20th-century compositions, notably Stravinsky’s exquisite, complex, and emotionally-satisfying “Symphony of Psalms”).

Leonard B. Meyer, a University of Chicago composer and philosopher, with major contributions in the fields of aesthetic theory in music, and compositional analysis, says it best:

“Indeed, the composer’s ingenuity and skill are challenged not by the secret art or unheard patterning per se–it is not difficult to devise ciphers–but in creating an audibly significant composition in which the hidden “meanings” were embedded.”⁷

Atonalists, Serialists, Twelve-tonalists, and other xyz-ists of the 20th century keep claiming that  the music they compose is worthy. The sad truth is that it is not. It is–at best–mediocre, and audiences instinctively know what it is mediocre, and what is not.

Respectfully,
Hicham Chami
Gainesville, FL

———————————————————————-

¹ Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 163.

² Treitler, Leo. “Musical Syntax in the Middle Ages: Background to an Aesthetic Problem.” Perspectives of New Music 4, no. 1 (Autumn 1965): 76. Accessed December 6, 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/832528.

³ Johnson, Clarence L., and Maggie Smith. Kelly – More than My Share of It All. Washington D.C. [u.a.: Smithsonian Inst. Pr., 1989.

⁴ The two expressions are not to be confused. According to Johnson, there is no insinuation that the engineer was stupid. As he (Johnson, the lead engineer) was handing out several design tasks to his crew, their challenge was that the aircraft they were working on must be repairable by an average mechanic in the field under enemy fire. ‘Stupid’ therefore refers to the relationship between the reasons machinery might malfunction, and the savoir-faire at hand to fix it.

⁵ Webster, Noah. “Music.” In An American Dictionary of the English Language…Thoroughly Revised, and Greatley Enlarged and Improved, by Chauncey, A. Goodrich and Noah Porten. Springfield, MA: G. and C. Merriam, 1872.

⁶ Ramnath, Bombay. “Folio: Music: December 03, 2000.” The Hindu : Front Page News : Monday, December 06, 2010. December 3, 2000. Accessed December 6, 2010. http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0012/fo001200.htm.

⁷ Meyer, Leonard B. “The Perception and Cognition of Complex Music.” In Music, the Arts and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-century Culture, 281. Chicago, Ill. [u.a.: Univ. of Chicago Pr, 1970.

By Nikolaos Skalkottas.

Actual photo.

So after long ago buying tickets to JB’s “Under the Big Top” tour — assuredly putting me on some sort of watch list — I decided… not to go.

Various reasons, among them:

• (a) I didn’t want to hear — in the far from pristine environment that is Jimmy’s actual voice — the post-1987 music I’ve yet to encounter,
• (b) I frankly didn’t want to hear the handful of songs I actually like equally butchered by the man who gave them life, and:
• (c) despite 16 albums of preparation I wasn’t ready to surround myself with the Buffett aesthetes who’ve practiced for this their entire lives.

I ended up there anyway.

After selling my tickets early in the week, I found myself last night, inexplicably, in a car with the Mrs. Brothers and some incredibly indulgent friends — who wish to remain anonymous (as, in retrospect, do I) — mere meters from where JB himself stood. It’s hard to explain, but once Jimmy set foot on Bay Area soil the gravity was inescapable: there was no way he and I weren’t going to share some bad music together — along with 40,000 of his drunkest friends. (Suffice to say that now I know what Vader felt whenever Luke approached the Death Star.)

So there we were. 9pm. (Jimmy went on at eight — it took me a while to motivate.) Idling at the curb, outside the concert. Semi-sober.

Problem One: Tickets.

Here’s a trick for all you future concert-goers. Apparently if you’re willing to:

• (a) show up more than an hour late,
• (b) sweet talk the honeys in the VIP entrance (this was key — and wasn’t me — thanks SJ), and
• (c) “donate” to the specious charity fronted by the guy with the keys to the arena

…you might find yourself with some tickets.

Problem Two: Parking.

We had tickets! We could hear Jimmy. (Win some, lose some.) And to the strains of “It’s My Job” — seriously — we encountered a parking attendant decidedly doing his: no way he was letting us into the lot.

Luckily for us, the next attendant was not so inspired by the lyrics. Seconds later we backed into a spot a short walk from the entrance. Next stop: beer concession.

Problem Three

None. (Unless you count “having to listen to Jimmy sing” a problem.) We were in. And there HE was, destroying “Cheeseburger in Paradise” as we found our seats. The sea of parrotheads was alive… blowing a collective .14 but alive… pulsating with every hit of the steel drum… and singing too off-key of its own accord to notice that the emperor had no tone.

I will say this for Jimmy Buffet fans. They are tremendously accepting — which makes sense given what they tolerate as music. In our short time there the crowd around us was willing to participate in numerous impromptu high-fives; to ignore my generally stilted concert demeanor and cries of distain whenever Jimmy talked or ad-libbed his way through a chorus; or to literally give one of my partners-in-crime the stuffed parrots off their heads, and the leis off their necks.

Come Sunday…

We didn’t last long. “Cheeseburger…,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (which I made sure to loudly proclaim was not about a real pirate), “Woman Going Crazy on Caroline Street,” “Margaritaville.” Check. A couple of other songs younger than the 16 albums I’ve devoured, and that I quickly wiped from memory. The crowd loves them some “Margaritaville,” which is fine (I don’t mind that song). But “Pirate…” sucks.

And then, as quickly as the evening had evolved, it was over. We were in the car, beating the traffic home. And rightly so. Jimmy’s worth a conscripted “donation” perhaps, but not worth an hour of bumper cars with parrothead motorhomes, boat trailers and other vehicular novelties.

But, come this morning, I was surprisingly wistful. “Fins” — which assuredly was to come in the encore (it did) — would have been fun. I was ready with hand gestures. “Wonder Why We Ever Go Home” was not on the set list (and I imagine never is), but I would have enjoyed. Likewise “Last Mango…,” “Lady I Can’t Explain,” and “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season” — all were not performed, and probably not missed by the Landshark-Lager-goggled crowd, but that I’m left wanting anything measurable at all from a Jimmy Buffett concert says a frightening amount about how this project has changed me.

Like that when Jimmy sets his 2011 tour dates, I might find myself again on the ticket pre-order list.

How is that possible?

I don’t wonder why we ever go home, Jimmy, but I do wonder what the hell you’ve done to me.

Thanks completely to the TBB support-crew/entire-readership that made the night happen. Next year we wear our own parrots!

Japanese Occupation Period (1942-1945) 

The Japanese discouraged jazz and the music of the western allies, and favored the creation and performance of native musical forms. Prizes were awarded to compositions utilizing native themes. Filipino composers and conductors were invited to give concerts. The impresario; Alfredo Lozano organized the New Philippine Symphony Orchestra composed of Filipino musicians. 

One of the few music schools that were open during the war was the Philippine Conservatory of Music affiliated with the Philippine Women’s University, founded by vocal pedagogue Felicing Tirona, with select faculty from the UP Conservatory of Music in its roster. 

The works of Japanese composers like Kozyak Yamada were performed in special concerts. However, Japanese music left no imprint on the style and content of Philippine music.

Post-war/Contemporary Period (1946 to date)

After independence in 1946, Philippine music showed a marked growth in cultural consciousness and nationalism. Music schools increased from the pre-war 12 to 33, offering Bachelor of Music courses in piano, voice, strings and wind instruments, music theory, composition and music education. Some schools offer course for the Master of Music degree.

The League of Filipino Composers was established in 1955 with 11 charter members. Filipino composers continued writing major works using western idioms with conventional traditions utilizing folk themes and legends. The concerto, symphony, symphonic poem, overture, suite, opera, choral, chamber, art song, ballet and incidental music were written during this period.   Contemporary composers utilized percussive dissonance, polyrhythm, atonality, music concrete, electronic music, synthesis of East/West in fresher modes, producing works of distinct cultural personality.

The ethnomusicologist/composer Jose Maceda whose exposure to Asian music and Filipino tribal music has produced an embodiment of his advanced thinking combining sounds with 20th century techniques in his avant-garde compositions.

Pioneering on the synthesis of East/West idioms, this writer has utilized ethnic Filipino/Asian instruments in her works. The younger group of composers led by Ramon P. Santos and Francisco P. Feliciano and followers like Ruben Federizon have pursued Asian environmental orientation, producing avant-garde works like Santos’ Singaw for jew’s harp, takumbo, gongs, violin, and Tinig for voices and percussions; Federizon’s Gabag-an for voices and ethnic instruments, and Tinig ng Lupa (Song of the Earth). – Dr. Lucresia R. Kasilar

End of (4 of 5)

My fish have lost their substance.  Sometimes they nearly lose their very fishness.  Without color, swimming in thought, not water.  Without blue.  Fluidity becoming line.

By Arnold Schöenberg.

[PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4]

By Witold Lutosławski. Movements I to III.

A piece of music resembles in some respects a photograph album, displaying under changing circumstances the life of its basic idea – its basic motive.

(Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition)

Here are some questions thrown at me by my young friend Melissa:

I think that many composers try to compose music that specifically and intentionally sounds “modern”. I wonder why they choose to do so. Isn’t it better to write music without trying to make it sound modern? What happened to purity of music and composition? Are they trying to copy the famous modern composers? Is it because they are incapable of finding their own distinctive style? Their music would be considered more “important” or “serious” because it sounds modern?

There could be many reasons but none of them seem convincing …

What would be the use of trying to sound like the old masters? Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, etc., have already done their work far better than most could ever emulate. Therefore the only options for serious musicians are to strike out in new directions or to find another set of musical tools: Oriental or other Asian scales, African-influenced polyrhythms, asymmetric rhythms such as you find in Bulgaria, and so on. (I have yet to hear a composer successfully combine Native American and classical idioms, although I have heard of one in the early 20th century, not one I had ever heard of before.) Such music may offend a few new music diehards but it will secure future audiences who love not mere novelty, but music that is different than others have done, music that breaks old moulds and creates new ones.

I think it was Lutoslawski who said “I try to write the music that I’d like to hear”. For the most part, that’s what composers are doing.

Of course, if you’re a composer in the 21st century, you have a huge range of potential influences which will inflect your musical preferences and style. It’s hardly surprising if some of them are “modern” in nature. Some of them also aren’t, even for “modern” composers: I find it impossible to conceive of Carter finding his late style without Mozart and Haydn – they’re such a massive influence on it.

Speaking as a composer I can only say that I don’t try to make my music sound like anything other than what I want it to sound like. I don’t know any composers who would say otherwise.

The music a composer writes is simply the sum of all the music he’s ever listened to and enjoyed, hopefully with enough original ideas thrown in to give the resulting mix a distinctive stamp. So if I happen to enjoy modern music, I’m going to have to practice a lot of self-censorship to keep it out of the music I write.

I would add that even the music I don’t enjoy makes a contribution. This would make a good compositional exercise, and I can think of a few composers who ought to try it: take some piece of music that you don’t like. It doesn’t even have to be a modern piece, maybe Wagner or Schubert for instance. It just has to be something that you know a lot of musicians greatly admire but you don’t. Try to copy that music and change whatever it is about that music that you don’t like; make it so that some essential part of it is still there, but altered in such a way that it suits your temperament, altered in such a way that you can call it your own.

For instance, recently I found myself composing something with the spare textures of post-Webern serialism. Well, I hate post-Webern serialism, but somehow what I was writing called for that sound, so the task was to see how to achieve it and still own up to it as my music. I was pleased that the resulting music sounded so much like what I think of as “me” even though a listener will definitely say “R.A.D. you’ve been taking your Webern pills again”.

Miles Davis once said the only reason to write new music was to that you were dissatisfied with what currently exists. There is no possible artistic reason to write music today in the style of Mendelssohn or Brahms or Schoenberg. We already have Mendelssohn, Brahms & Schoenberg. A composer today has to meaningfully address the question of what it means to write new music in this tradition in 2010. The answer is not to throw out the last 100 years of composition (and “atonal” music is now that old). Composers must both acknowledge the tradition they inherit and not be bound by it. This is an increasingly difficult task for each generation of composers, as they have to digest and adapt to all that has come before them.

A very recent work for piano trio and vocals (based on an Octavio Paz text), Reinaldo Moya’s La Rima, with the JACK Quartet’s Christopher Otto on violin and Kevin McFarland on cello made a solid segue, strings swooping over a pensive piano rumble, building to a contrast between terse, incisive piano methodically punching against sostenuto atmospherics. A world premiere, William Cooper’s An Den Wassern Zu Babel was an intense and poignant interpretation of Psalm 137 (you may know it from Bach or the Melodians’ By the Rivers of Babylon). Cooper explained how affecting he found the end of the passage, which concludes with “Blessed are those who bash the bones of their children against the rocks,” and while the music, with considerable echoes of Bartok, never reached that level of violence, there was considerable anger and even more frustration. Over the course of seven movements, pianist Liza Stepanova worked the variations of a simple ascending progression lyrically and dynamically, through a sad, angry march, a hypnotically chilling, late Rachmaninovian-style passage and then the methodical, wounded sway of the final movement which ended sudden and cold.

The final piece, Nathan Shields’ Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking set text by Hart Crane and Walt Whitman to severe, sometimes acidic, evocatively wavelike piano played by Ed Neeman, Fischer speaking the final stanzas with a dramatic flair. The counterpoint between vocals and piano was both striking and hypnotic, the unease of the strings adding to the menace (the theme ponders the role of the ocean as both nurturer and destroyer), but as assured and engaged as the performers were, ultimately this was Horse Latitudes: awkward instant, and the first horse of many was jettisoned. What a treat it would be to hear this without the poetry – or with vocalese instead!

The popular, reliably adventurous Music Mondays at Advent Lutheran Church at 93rd and Broadway continues on May 31 with the Brentano Quartet.

The single most impressive musical development since World War II has been the astonishingly rapid and widespread dissemination of the practice of twelve-tone composition.

(George Perle, Serial Composition and Atonality)

It does really matter, when and where I am, when I compose. Some places are generally better to sit and compose than others. But one very powerful fact is that in the late evening or the early hours of the morning I’m much more productive than in the whole day. As soon as the dark comes and I’m getting tired, I can hear the music glowing in my head. Sometimes, when I pour a drink and start to compose, I have to refresh the music just for a moment, but in the late evening hours the music is always trying to refresh me. Wherever I go, I can hear the music all the time, and of course that’s only good for the productivity. But it’s just so irritating, that it starts when I’m too tired or drunk to write anything.

Sometimes I must hurry up from my warm bed to find paper and pen – I did that only two days ago.

Sometimes particular compositional problems will work themselves out in my dreams. And once, totally without any rhyme or reason, I dreamed about a chord … I saw it on the paper and it was luminous. As it glowed it sounded in my head as well. I woke up and wrote the chord down, which sounded almost as magical in real life as it did in the dream. I still use the chord frequently, particularly if I am referring to anything magical or otherworldly, though I also like it in abstract music.

Too often I hear people talking about how they hate atonal music, and that it’s garbage.  They praise tonality saying that that’s the way music was supposed to stay.

In other words: Tonal = Beautiful.  Atonal = Ugly.

This is simply not what these words mean.

A lot of this is semantics but for the most part (really simplified) tonal is referring to a specific system of music composition techniques.  A set of certain rules helping to aid the “function” of music.  Tonic is home, dominant leads to the tonic, cadential material, pre-cadential material, post-cadential and so forth.  Harmony has a “function,” along with leading tones, resolutions, etc.  The climax of this sort of music belongs to J.S. Bach.  Of course it existed before him and after him, but we look to Bach as the ultimate example of this kind of music.

Before tonality was what we generally refer to as “modality,”  music based on modes rather than the tonal major/minor scales that we’re used to. We see examples of this in Binchois, and Du Fay.  So after Tonality, what then?  Atonality?

In a sense, yes, to say that something is atonal really means that it’s just not tonal.  That, however, doesn’t mean it’s ugly.  What are some examples of atonal music that aren’t ugly?  How ’bout Debussy?  Copland?  Vaughan Williams?  Holst?  Shastokovich?  Duruflé?  Barber?  Pärt?  Whitacre?  These are all examples of music that’s beautiful but not necessarily tonal.  They don’t follow the rules that Bach did.  They’re not concerned as much with resolutions, dominant-tonic relations, and leading tones.  They follow a different set of aesthetics yes, but they don’t follow tonality.  By strict definition they are all atonal composers.

Many would then say that it’s the dissonance they don’t like.  Suddenly Consonance = Beautiful, and Dissonance = Ugly.  But this isn’t correct either.  Dissonance has been around since Medieval music.  Dissonance causes tension between the consonances.  Can dissonance be jarring?  Yes.  Irritating?  Sometimes.  Necessary?  Absolutely.  The music of Bach, Beethoven and Purcell displays a great deal of dissonance, and yet we don’t find it ugly, even if it’s not your cup of tea.

In general, when people refer to “atonality,” they are referring to the Second Viennese School, the music of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg.  True, it isn’t tonal, so it is atonal, but atonal isn’t the only way to describe it.  Schoenberg went through several styles of composition but the ones he is most famous for is his so called “free-atonal” period, and his serial period.  The hallmark of the “free-atonality” period is his multi-movement, Pierrot Lunaire.  Despite the lack of rules in tonality, it’s highly organized in form, rhythm and instrumentation.  After this period, he then created a system of composition based on the use of all twelve unique pitch classes.  Despite that it sounds random, there is a high level or organization of the pitches.

My point it, this is serialism, or dodecaphony.  Is it atonal?  Yes.  Is this what atonal is?  No.  To say that this music, alone, is how atonal music is defined is too narrow.  One side note, Schoenberg himself preferred that it be called “pan-tonal music,” because it uses all twelve pitch classes.  I don’t particularly care for this style of music myself, either for listening or composing, but it is a part of our history of music.  Some of these techniques can be quite useful.

So that’s my little rant.  Just be more careful about how you use the word “atonal.”  Is it an inaccurate term?  Yes, but it’s all we’ve got for now.

The Romantic period is often characterized by great inquiry into the subject of chromaticism and of pushing tonality to the utmost limits. To some extent, this is no doubt true. However, it is my personal opinion, based on my own study of music, that the actual credit of innovation during the period in regards to chromatic harmony is somewhat misdirected. As stated in the previous post, examples of extensive chromatic harmony, more typical of Romanticism, can be found in the works of J.S. Bach. Thus, it stands to reason, that the actual principles were in place from the very beginning. The exploration of chromaticism was, then, not some new venture or tangent of tonality, but exactly that: an exploration of the principles already in place. For the musician with a keen eye, a thread can be found that runs through the music time line from Bach to Dvorak and skips around through each successive generation of composers. For the one who really understands tonal harmony, there is no difference, in terms of the underlying principles, in the harmony of Bach and that of Brahms, or Beethoven, or Mendelssohn.

However, occurring simultaneously during the Romantic era, was the general decline of the tonal system until its ultimate collapse into atonality. This trend is difficult to understand and is often attributed to the aforementioned exploration of chromaticism. Yet, there is a more important component that is almost always overlooked. During the Romantic period there was a great shift away from the master/apprentice approach to teaching composition towards that based on textbooks and university lectures. This, undoubtedly had severe negative effects on the quality of music education. Thus, the music world was flooded with inadequately trained musicians and composers. A prime example is Hugo Wolf, a late Romantic composer often described as being on the cusp of the modern era. His harmonic language is extremely chromatic, yet, it was not this that Brahms felt the need to comment on when looking over his compositions. Instead, Brahms remarked that Wolf would benefit greatly from a thorough study of counterpoint. There was nothing, abstractly speaking, wrong with Wolf’s harmonies, yet it was his compositional technique (which is essentially what counterpoint is) that was in desperate need of improvement. Another example is Franz Liszt. Being primarily a performer, when he ultimately turned to composition in his later life, he lacked the study of the subject that other composers had acquired early in their careers. Therefore, his was also an unruly talent, and it is for this reason that some of his late piano music marks the beginning of the departure from tonality.

Ultimately, there were too few composers and theorists left trained in the older methods to keep the tonal movement alive. Tonality breathed on in a much degenerated and lawless fashion through the early part of the 20th century and can be seen in the lieder of Hugo Wolf and the piano music of Alexander Scriabin. A more or less bootleg form of tonality has resurged over the past few decades, and is typical of modern concert band literature. However, it lacks the discipline and intricacies of the former system.

As you may or may not know (I certainly didn’t know the specifics until I read this article), yesterday was the 50th birthday of Miles Davis’ landmark album Kind of Blue. That’s cool enough in itself, but what’s even cooler is how Slate‘s Fred Kaplan breaks down the nitty gritty of Davis’ innovative music theory.

Most music in what music scholars call the “common practice” period of European classical music is based on the notion of triadic chords: you’ve heard of a “C major chord” or an “a minor chord,” etc.  Triads in what we call “root position” have their main, or tonic, note on the bottom (i.e. as the lowest note) and then build two more harmonizing notes on top to create the familiar sound.  Plenty of other musical systems rely on this foundational principle of harmony, such as blues, many kinds of folk music and much of the pop we listen to today.  (One of the key harmonic differences among these musics is how the chords are patterned: Muddy Waters’ blues progressions are, for example, different from the progressions you’ll hear in a Mozart sonata, though many of the same kinds of chords may be used.)

Conventional harmony also relies on the notion of a key or tonic: a primary pitch and associated harmony (in D major, for example, this pitch would be D; in e minor, it’s e, and so forth, generally speaking) around which every other pitch and harmony is organized hierarchically.

Jazz was based on this general theory for a long, long time, until Davis came and blew (I’m resisting making a pun) the whole system out of the water on Kind of Blue.  In fact, chord progressions were (and often still are) perhaps more fundamental to jazz than to many other kinds of music due to jazz’s improvisational nature.  Musicians knew what chords were coming next and improvised on them; without mutual agreement on chords, it was impossible for the complex interplay of voices that is jazz to occur.

But in the 1950s, Davis was looking for the next new thing and lighted on his friend George Russell’s theory of modes, an entirely new way of thinking about the relationships and hierarchies among the 12 pitches available within the Western musical system:

Russell threw the compass out the window.  You could play all the notes of a scale, which is to say any and all notes.  ”It is for the musician to sing his own song really,” Russell wrote, “without having to meet the deadline of a particular chord.”  In other words, he continued, “you are free to do anything” (the italics were his), “as long as you know where home is”–as long as you know where you’re going to wind up.

One night in 1958, Russell sat down with Davis at a piano and laid out his theory’s possibilities–how to link chords, scales, and melodies in almost unlimited combinations.  Miles realized this was a way out of bebop’s cul-de-sac.  ”Man,” he told Russell, “if Bird [Charlie Parker] was alive, this would kill him.”

Out of this new freedom was born Kind of Blue and an entirely new jazz landscape.  There are a few links in the article which are worth listening to, but better yet, pick up the album for yourself if you don’t already own it.

Also, read this quote.  I hope I’m not the only one who sees (infinitely more exciting and enjoyable-to-listen-to) echoes of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School in this approach:

“When you go this way,” [Davis] said, “you can go on forever.  You don’t have to worry about changes, and you can do more with time.  It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you are….I think a movement in jazz is beginning, away from the conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variations.  There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.”

People who lump all classical music as boring. There are even bigger differences between music of the early Baroque and the late Romantic, and especially between Renaissance and 20^th century classical music.

People and ensembles who charge too much for tickets. Not everyone wants to, or can pay, $30-50/ticket to see a major ensemble, and especially for minor ensembles!

Exrobriant CD prices for new artists. I think if new artists sold their CDs at about $10-12/CD, instead of the usual approximately $20/CD, there would be greater CD sales.

People who underestimate what children can do musically. A lot of music teachers believe young students cannot play with an exceptional tone, or cannot be taught to analyze complicated rhythms. But they can be taught! A lot of music students cannot even play 6/8 time, a common time signature in music, or some teachers think they can’t do it before a certain age. But I know 8 year olds who can play in 6/8 time very well!

People who underestimate what older beginners (teens, adults, and seniors), are able to accomplish. I know of at least one student my husband taught for 1 1/2 years, who had almost no prior experience with music instruction, and yet in the time she studied with him, she reached an intermediate level of piano playing after that time while taking hour-long lessons almost every week. She was middle aged too, I think she was in her late 40s or 50s when she started learning.

People who underestimate what learning challenged students are able to accomplish. Some people believe that people with certain learning challenges cannot and should not learn to read music; that all their instruction should be taught by rote. But I’ve had learning challenged students who’ve done well in exams and auditions, including one student with autism! (And a clarinet student at that!)

People who think musical talent is a single ability, such as perfect pitch. Many fine musicians do not possess perfect pitch, though some of them have such a fine sense of relative pitch (which is more useful anyway) that it can be mistaken for perfect pitch.

“Some have a wish for music to be primarily an antidote to existential loneliness. When music fills this role, it’s lovely, but the idea that this is music’s primary function is so limiting as to be just bathetic. Music is a powerful, temporal art, and it needs to fulfill all the functions of art—to challenge, to celebrate, to excite intellectually and spiritually. To draw an ineffectual line called ‘tonality’ in the sand, and demand that none shall pass, will not work.”

This is from an excellent article on New Music Box by Alan Fletcher, president of the Aspen Music Festival. It’s a good read who’s argument for why we need all kinds of music are not “bathetic.” It also goes into some of the myths that surround new music.

Danger! Western Cultural

Treasures Content!

Run Away!

On MUDGE’s recent, grotesquely obnoxiously huge birthday (let us suggest that no candles were placed on the figurative birthday cake, since nobody could figure out how to find a cake large enough to accommodate the grotesquely obnoxiously huge number of candles required), my lovely children gifted me with a book that seems intriguing. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross is next up, kids, I promise.

They know (and you might, faithful reader from posts like this one and especially here) of my general interest in serious (classical) music, and my mature years dismay (as a youngster I toyed with appreciating it as kids toy with lots of stuff they ultimately outgrow) with what has happened to it in the past 100 years or so.

Well now I feel especially guilty that I haven’t hit the Ross book yet. The late David Halberstam’s Korean War epic, The Coldest Winter, is currently nibbled at [confound it, this newfangled blogging thing has bitten voraciously into book reading time!], and as it is borrowed from a coworker, has priority.

All this angst because I was reminded of the waiting tome when I encountered the following article courtesy of the (always reliable in an idea drought) Arts and Letters, pulling from a publication new to this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©, the National Post of Canada.

Turns out this year is the 100th anniversary of the revolution in serious music instigated by the Viennese master, Arnold Schoenberg.

The atonal century

1n 1908, after being lambasted in the press and cuckolded by his wife, Arnold Schoenberg reinvented classical music. We’re still trying to figure out what comes next

John Keillor, National Post  Published: Monday, January 14, 2008

This year marks the centenary of monosodium glutamate, drip coffee makers, the FBI and — most importantly — atonality as we know it.

In 1908, Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg led the classical tradition away from its audience, changing the world with music not in any key and of no commercial value. He put music before audiences, both literally and figuratively, and in doing so created some of Western culture’s best music while gutting classical’s contemporary significance.

Schoenberg started writing compositions as a child in the 1880s, studying Bach and Mozart passionately. And though none of his family was artistic, his music began demonstrating genius, soon blending the sounds of those romantic antipodes, Brahms and Wagner.

Schoenberg was influential beyond all imagining; he was a deadly serious artist, and in 1908, under some artistic and marital stress, apparently forgot how to use tonality.

The intellectual world was ready; people who loved classical music were decidedly not.

A century of avant-garde music was thus born. Academics and connoisseurs really appreciated the results, though the general public assumed a thousand years of music just stopped being made.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

The atonal century

If you linked back to those previous posts referenced up top, you know where yr (justifiably) humble svt stands on this issue. Color me firmly with the general public.

Anyway, after I soldier through Korea, I’ll hit the Ross book, and be able to speak on the subject of what happened to the classical music I love from a position of detailed, precise and intellectually comprehensive knowledge, rather than instinct.

Hmmm, kind of like what happened to composers after Schoenberg’s chromatic disturbance of 1908.

Sigh.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the links to Amazon.com used above are for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor, and in any event it’s against WordPress.com’s rules. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

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Alex Ross announces Worldwide Atonality Day this coming Monday, December 17th. Why?

By my calcuations, this Monday, December 17, is the hundredth anniversary of atonality. Celebrate as you wish. On that date in 1907, Arnold Schoenberg sketched the song “Ich darf nicht dankend” (“I must not in gratitude [sink down before you]“), music in which conventional tonal harmonies grow exceedingly scarce. (You can listen on the Schoenberg Center Jukebox; scroll down to Op. 14.) The composer supplied no key signature in his draft, although he later added one — B minor — to the clean copy and published score. The claim is arguable, but for me this marks the beginning of Schoenberg’s adventures outside tonality. It may be no coincidence that Schoenberg wrote the song, a setting of Stefan George, just eight days after the departure for New York of Gustav Mahler, who had served as Schoenberg’s protector. “You are the spiritual plain from which we rose” is the second line of George’s poem. With Mahler gone, Schoenberg may have felt at once abandoned and liberated. He was free to become himself.

Read the rest of this post here.