So, I throw out the term “new music,” along with “modern music,” and “contemporary music.” In other words, music that is composed in the 20th century and later. EwwuglySchoenbergmodernkeepitawaymyearshurtgivemeBeethoven.

Being in a music school, I hear it all the time. Mostly from students, occasionally from a professor. I have to admit that it gives me a feeling of anger and sometimes a feeling of uncontrollable laughter, to know those who have such a COMPLETE OPPOSITION to music beyond the mid 19th century (or recent music that resembles the mid 19th century and earlier). Don’t worry, I keep those feelings to myself. On one occasion, I had to speak in front on my university’s Board of Trustees on behalf of the students of the composition program and was confronted with a statement that went something very similarly to this: “If an orchestra performs something that I detest on a concert, then I may not buy a season pass next year.” I have to say that I find these kinds of attitudes to be very worrisome.

It can be stated (very) arguably that Beethoven was the Schoenberg of his time. His later music was not widely accepted; as a matter of fact, it was found to be quite boisterous and not pleasing to the ear. His music, in addition to his personality and deteriorating health, made him rather unpopular. However, he was innovative. He redefined the sonata (both the large work and the form); he introduced extreme contrasts in register, dynamics, and texture; he presented extreme chromatic relationships both harmonically and melodically, and the list goes on. Beethoven’s influence expanded to composers Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.

In a nut shell, Beethoven WAS new music.

Jump ahead into Schoenberg. In his younger years, he was known for expanding on the romantic traditions of Brahms and Wagner, and making innovations in atonality. What we know Schoenberg for is the widely influential and highly academic twelve-tone method, which influenced composers like Berg, Webern, and Babbitt and defined the abstract world of classical composition in the 20th century. Alongside the twelve-tone method were Edgar Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who were major developers of electronic music. During their time, we see the development of the Theremin, the Moog synthesizer, the Hammond organ, and the ondes martenot. Their techniques are apparent in the music of Olivier Messiaen, the film scores of Bernard Herrmann, and the popular music of the Beatles (especially Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album).

Just so you know, Schoenberg WAS new music.

In a response of opposition to the abstract nature of modern music, came the idea and technique of minimalism, developed by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Minimalism had a heavy hand in rock music and in techno music. A very well-known song among the classic rock crowd is Baba O’Riley (or maybe you think of it as Teenage Wasteland), a tribute to Terry Riley which features an arpeggiating synthesizer throughout the song.

New music is extremely necessary; it’s as necessary now as it was in the Middle Ages, hence Ars Nova (New Art). Composers are always exploring new ground. However, it can’t be done without support. It concerns me that there are attitudes like the man on the Board of Trustees, who was willing to cut off his financial support from the orchestra if they played something that he didn’t care for. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one. These are hard times for professional and amateur ensembles and makes new music less and less marketable for both performance and publishing. As a result, composing becomes less financially viable. But to say that you don’t support new music, means that you don’t care for the future of the arts. Listening to new music doesn’t imply developing tolerance for it, but rather developing appreciation. Have respect for new music as long as its composed well.

Dagens fødselar er John Cale, der fylder 67. Skønt han aldrig har befundet i den brede strøm, der får mest opmærksomhed, så er der få, der har haft større indflydelse på rockmusikken de seneste snart 45 år. Siden han dannede Velvet Underground sammen med Lou Reed (der er født præcis en uge tidligere), har Cale ikke mindst sat sit præg på, hvordan rockmusik lyder. Han kom fra avantgardemiljøet i New York (hvor han arbejdede sammen med bl.a. John Cage og LaMonte Young) og overførte sine erfaringer derfra på rock. Kombineret med Lou Reeds tekster blev det til de to epokegørende plader Velvet Underground & Nico og White Light/White Heat, før uoverensstemmelserne med Lou Reed blev for store. Som producer for bl.a.  The Stooges, Nico, Jonathan Richman og Patti Smith har han i allerhøjeste grad også præget andres lyd.

Som solist har han lavet en lang række plader i snart sagt alle genrer, og lavet musik til film, teater og ballet. Cale har også gjort det til en specialitet at tolke andres sange. En fortolkning, der ofte former sig som en proces, hvor den samme sang år efter år tolkes på stadig nye måder. Det gælder fx Leonard Cohens “Hallelujah”, Lou Reeds “Waiting for the man”, Jonathan Richmans “Pablo Picasso”. Og det gælder mere end nogen anden sang Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel”, der her er i en udgave fra 1981 (med Andy Summers fra The Police på guitar):

John Cale er født i Wales. Som barn blev han betragtet som et musikalsk vidunderbarn og blev kaldt “vor tids Mozart”. Da han fik stipendie til at studere i New York tog hans musikalske udvikling måske en anden retning end man havde forestillet i hjemlandet; men nu er anerkendelsen i hvert fald kommet. John Cale er blevet valgt til at repræsentere Wales ved biennalen i Venedig 2009.

Angus MacLise Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda:

Equal parts avant-garde drone, indian classical, and psychedelic. MacLise and his collaborators create trance inducing music with eerie chanted vocals and random explosions of sound and intense percussion. The poor recording quality, negatively effects the music in a big way. On many tracks several instruments will barely be audible. An interesting listen, when you can actually hear whats going on.

Rating: 10/15 electric shamans

Terry Riley

Persian Surgery Dervishes

http://www.mediafire.com/?jglndi3mn4m

Terry Riley embodies the essence of minimalism. His music has always tapped into the primal recesses of my brain and lured me into some pretty deep meditative states. His mastery isn’t a surprise since he learned under the tutleage of the master of Indian classical music, Pandit Pran Nath, who has also blown a few of my synapses over the years. His devotion to the open-ended nature of composition and performance via his series of All-Night Concerts in the 60s and divine patience in developing themes only to allow them to morph into something even more transcendent is awe-inspiring in my grubby book. Plus, I like the idea of how he would invite people to bring sleeping bags and pillows to his All-Night Concerts so he could play tape-delayed saxophone and the harmonium until sunrise.  I can only imagine what it would be like to experience the incessant undulation and shifts in tone as Riley whisked all of his willing passengers into a trance state. Maybe I am just a born sucker for the hypnotic powers of a slowly developing riff or composition, but my weary heart wishes it could be a part of such a near-religious experience. Alright, enough of my pseudo-mystical banter and butchered romanticism toward altered states of mind, let’s get to the nitty gritty of what makes Persian Surgery Dervishes a welcome addition to my life.

I don’t have the second half of the double cd which collects these dual performance of Persian Surgery Dervishes, but the one pasted here includes a 1971 performance in Los Angeles. I prefer this one over the Paris performance since it is somehow more damaged, yet serene. I am drawn to Persian Surgery Dervishes since there is so much accomplished with two distinct elements. You have a slow-motion organ riff that kind of percolates in the background. It really doesn’t deviate much from its bearings. Its job is to throb in the background while Riley goes bananas on an electric organ. This second element is essential to the piece since it is the motor which drives the composition. Well, this motor gets quite revved up at times, but doesn’t really go anywhere. It is static, yet incredibly busy at time. Riley knows the allure of restraint and pacing and slowly builds from a sensual tease to a goddamn psychedelic frenzy. He really beats the shit out the organ when the piece gets hectic. It’s even hard to type this as I listen to it since there are sections which make your brain feel like taffy left on the radiator for the night. There isn’t really any concessions to melody, but to twisting patterns that kind of collide and coalesce into something larger than the previous motif.  For me, it mimics the many thoughts that bounce around in our minds. There is something soothing about examining one’s life closely and traversing the pathways of thought. Somehow, Persian Surgery Dervishes is the perfect companion for those times when you find yourself in the eye of the storm and can lucidly examine the reasons behind the tumult and transition. Again, I am getting a but too heavy for my own good, so let’s just say that it’ll blow your boo-boo loose and make cole slaw out of your cabbage.

Thoughts in Sound from musicians at the bleeding edges of music including John Cage, Brian Eno, Terry Riley and Keith Jarrett.

You can also hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music.

Every musician plays notes, but some of them think about the nature of sound a lot more than others. For them, music isn’t just a conveyor of melody and rhythm, but a pathway into sound itself. No one captured the meaning of sound better than avant-garde iconoclast, John Cage. John Cage died 1992, but in the spring of 1987, he was still enjoying the sounds of the city permeating his Chelsea home.

John Cage: I have a friend, Paul Zukofsky, the violinist, who used to come and stay where I lived in New York when I left and when Merce Cunningham left because it was so quiet but he no longer comes because this is so noisy. For me it’s a great pleasure though, to hear all the sounds. I find it very, just plain musical.

Brian Eno: Music has become part of the tapestry of your life like lighting is or like the environmental sound that you here anyways…. Anyway I was excited by the idea of making music that acknowledged that and said “Here’s a music that is especially for that. Here’s a music that is intended to merge into the environment. “

Eno’s concepts were inspired by Cage and by minimalist composers who wanted to bring out sonic details and focus through repetition.                                                                                   
Terry Riley: Tape loop creates a stasis in the sound and you can watch something as if it were stopped in a camera frame and it repeats over and over again. And You start to notice the real deep details that can draw the mind in   also.

Surprisingly, pianist Keith Jarrett, who is anti-electronic, and far from minimalist, still reflects a similar desire to get to the essence of sound.
Keith Jarrett: As long ago as when I was at Slugs with Charles Lloyd I had this feeling that I might quit music because all I had to play was one note, you know, and that recurs in different guises now and then. But what it suggests is that I don’t really need all that big an instrument to justify what I want to hear.

Keith Jarrett, Terry Riley, Brian Eno and John Cage. They are musicians who have gone into the microcosms of sound, often returning to produce some of the most influential, and even popular music of the last 50 years. They are among ten artists we’ll hear next week on a special Echoes series called Thoughts in Sound. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

You can also hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music.

Thoughts in Sound is a series we produced through a grant from the Public Radio Exchange.  It includes interviews with Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams and Keith Jarrett.  You can read a more extensive article about this and hear each complete 5 minute audio piece here.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

get a grip

And a good day to you, fair friend! The name’s Terrorbooty but don’t let the name full you; peace and love is what I’ about (cheesy, but true). So what’s my shtick? I work on e-commerce for the beautiful people at PONO, a lovely NYC-based accessories line who are also fueled by peace and love. Goes to show what a philosophy/history degree gets you these days. Currently, I live by myself in Ohio and come to the city monthly; it’s pretty chill. But besides music and learning, I am an electronic musician/fanatic and play in a slew of weirdo projects. So what better way to unify multiple personalities than a blog?!

Surveying the virtual desert that is the blogosphere, I decided that what the internet truly, truly needed was another blog, especially one by an anonymous androgynous information junkie! Seriously though, I envision this to be a daily mish-mash of musings on the high and low, a phrase you hopefully won’t see me use again. These days, what the difference? Whether it be Spinoza or Speidi, Gucci and Goodwill, and Lil Wayne or LaMonte Young, everything feeds into and off of each other. Thanks for that one internet!

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Yeah, one’s a pop song with a wicked beat and some of Weezy’s best free association and the other’s a 10 minute drone piece, but for me, there is no difference. These homies are Zen soulmates for life; they won’t stop, can’t stop.

In other news, there’s an extremely fascinating article in July’s Elle (the one with professional clothes horse Mary-Kate Olsen on the cover). “What, an intriguing article in Elle???” Well, in the course of doing some accessories research for my job, I came across an article by Patsy K. Eagan about the relationship between anxiety and marijuana. Having suffered from the one since I was three and used the other for some time to help ease my angst, I found it an oddly moving article to find in Elle of all places! I currently can’t find it online, but I contacted Patsy and maybe, just maybe, she’ll slip me a copy to share.

Tomorrow’s my birthday, which I usually don’t give two shits about, but the fantastic DJ/producer Move D, whose Drone single is a definite fave for the year, is playing Sunday’s Best at The Yard from 3-9pm and it will be banging! No stylized mannequins there, just good people who love to get down!

Talk about random. Hopefully talk to you all tomorrow!

Publié par l’excellent éditeur new-yorkais Zone Books, cette étude fait le point sur l’oeuvre de Tony Conrad, sa position dans l’histoire de la musique et du cinéma, et ses contributions à la scène expérimentale depuis les années 60. On y croise La Monte Young, Le Velvet Underground, Faust, Mike Kelley, Henry Flynt, etc.