Totalism

Tonight's blog is unlikely to be a long one.  Why is that?  Well, here's what happened.  I started to listen to the listening examples given for totalism, then started to do my standard research on the composers, related pieces, etc.  This led to more articles, and more and more pieces worth checking out and listening to, more scores worth skimming through.  Now it's four hours later, it's very late, and I have only just started writing this blog.

This is some of the music that, subjectively, I seem to love the most.  John Luther Adams, Michael Gordon, David Lang, etc.--these are composers whose music I could listen to for days, and always be finding something new, always enjoying each next piece.  Totalism is (according to Wikipedia) about the balance of background complexity with surface rhythmic complexity.  I love this.  I could even reframe it as such: totalism is a method through which composers create intelligent music that also grooves and maintains a sense of fun.  This does not apply in every case (e.g. JLA's music is rarely "fun" to my ears), but it is a decent summary of why I so often and deeply enjoy it.  I can truly enjoy it on the very first listening, unlike many composers I quite like, because I can groove along with it, and thereby really involve myself in the affect.  Then, I can enjoy it more with each subsequent listening, as I pick out more and more of the legitimate intricacy and intelligence of composition going on underneath the rhythmically complex surface.

I do have one major question here: how do we distinguish between totalism and post-minimalism?  Having read some different things about both topics tonight, I've come to several assumptions, but I don't know if they are correct.  I've listened to lots of both styles before, but no one has ever been there to tell me "This one is post-minimalist; this one is totalist."  As a result, I have no frame with which to distinguish between the two.  It seems to me, from my minimal reading tonight, that totalism focuses more on rhythmic complexity, whereas post-minimalism, while placing emphasis on importance of rhythm, is not always dependent on complexity of rhythm.  It also seems that post-minimalism is usually "pretty" and centric in some fashion, whereas totalism does not feel the need to do the same, and is often dissonant (though it often maintains a sense of fun and audience-friendliness through groove).  Are my assumptions here correct?  I might be totally off-base.  Kyle Gann has a discography list of post-minimal, totalist, and rare minimalist music, which can be found here.  How do he and others make these distinctions?  He does say that the line between the two is fairly arbitrary, but I'm not even sure what the arbitrary line is based on--how do they differ?

John Luther Adams (JLA) is often an exception to several things I've stated here.  His music only occasionally has a "groove," and when it does, it is often more of an insistent pulsing, or otherwise an incomprehensibly dense rhythmic texture, instead of a groovy beat.  JLA's music is almost exclusively based on or taking inspiration from the nature of Alaska, where he lives.  His sound is wide open and often has a sense of isolation.  He talks about Alaska as a "great reservoir of silence," and this enters his music, keeping it wide open in timbre and lending value to many of his textural ideas.

One thing that absolutely anchors JLA in totalism is his rhythmic complexity.  It is not always immediately apparent, but it is almost always present.  For example, in his work "In the White Silence," the entire piece sounds to exist simply as slowly evolving textures.  However, while most of the notes last over a measure long and are legato in nature, when a note changes, it is usually in a strange rhythmic position--the second half-note triplet of the bar, or the third quintuplet of the half-measure, etc.  This reaches the ears as gradual a metric changes, but using complex changing points allows for the voices of this "chorale" to avoid changing at the same time, activating the texture of the work without it sounding like a bland, homorhythmic romantic chorale.

It's worth taking a minute to discuss JLA's massive recent work Inuksuit for 9 to 99 percussionists.  It is a spatial, outdoor work, usually spread out across a park or several acres of field or forest.  The audience is invited to wander among the performers at will, allowing each to construct his or her own experience (just like Cage's HPSCHD).  I mention the work not only because it is a recent passion of mine (and I finally get to perform it for the first time this May), but because the work has become something totally unique to the musical world--it has created a new series of mini-festivals based around itself.  I don't think JLA realized it when he composed the work, but he was creating the perfect storm for weekend percussion getaways.  It is now the norm for any city or university to host an Inuksuit--"Inuksuit Rochester," "Inuksuit Wisconsin," "Inuksuit Brooklyn," etc.  A loving and devoted community has developed around the piece, and when someone decides to put the piece together the Inuksuit crowd always comes out of the woodwork from a radius of hundreds of miles around.  They gather for the weekend to hang with other interesting and fun musicians and put together a huge percussive work, then head back to their respective homes and wait for the next Inuksuit festival.  At this point, there is an Inuksuit somewhere in the country at least once every two or three months.  JLA attends many of them, and most are run by Doug Perkins (current percussionist of eighth blackbird, champion of cool new music, and in many ways a mentor/father figure to the young chamber percussion community--I've mentioned him several times in this blog, and he continues to be relevant).  I wonder if there are currently or have ever been pieces of music that have elicited a similar response, in galvanizing many mini-festivals and creating a widespread community who travel long ways to make the piece happen once in a while in different locations.  Any ideas for pieces that have created similar movements?

A fun little video about the making of the Inuksuit recording,

which is a wholly remarkable recording--it never should have

worked nearly as well as it did, and it makes for an incredible album.

With Inuksuit, again JLA has created a work about atmosphere, not groove, but using incredibly intricate rhythmic relationships in order to create the shifting atmosphere.  He stacks rhythms using unique notation methods, and it ranges from static droning to a wall of frenetic percussive chaos.  Alex Ross of the New Yorker called it "one of the most rapturous experiences of my listening life."  It's a heck of an experience.

JLA is also important right now as the most recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he won just last weekend for his orchestral work Become Ocean.  I have yet to hear the work, but I cannot wait to (it's not yet available anywhere).  It's classic JLA, for a multitude of reasons--symmetrical form, long cascading waves of intensification and subsiding, lush string sounds, strongly and actively environmentalist, and deeply entrenched in Alaska and Alaskan issues.  All of these are hallmarks of nearly all JLA's works.  His totalist style allows his music to float, free of rhythmic chains, through its own unique rhythmic complexity.  This, added to the intelligence running through the pitch material, scoring, etc. is where the term totalism becomes appropriately descriptive of his work.

Rock and the Avant Garde

In connection with my last post about jazz connections, it's worth taking some time to look at rock's interactions with this lovely world of concert music.  These tend to come in two types, determined generally by performance setting: we are either talking about 1) concert music using rock styles and techniques, or 2) rock music using concert styles and techniques.  In other words, option 1 is music played in a concert hall, often by more "classical" musicians, often composed using concert notation; while option 2 is rock music played in rock concert venues and settings, often by more "rock"ish musicians.  It's a question of presentation that makes this artificial separation.  I have strongly caring feelings toward both--much of the classical music I love is rock-influenced, and much of the rock music I love is concert-influenced.  Today, I'll be focusing more on the former.  Why?  I'm not sure.  Because I'm exhausted and that's what I happen to be leaning toward right now.

One man who has been working on this frontier for decades is Rhys Chatham.  He began his career as a piano tuner for La Monte Young and harpsichord tuner for Glenn Gould (WHOA).  He moved on to study extensively with La Monte Young and become active as a composer and performer in that scene of minimalism.  Eventually, in the late 70s, he began on what would become the focus of his life's work: guitar ensemble music.  His works are influenced by rock and punk, as well as early minimalism.  Often they have a vibe of process to them, as he focuses on one or two techniques or attributes to follow through to their full potential to compose a piece.  He has worked with classical musicians like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Pauline Oliveros, and rock musicians such as members of Sonic Youth and more.  I listened to a large sample of his first evening length work, and his first work for 100-guitar ensemble: An Angel Moves Too Fast To See.  Listening without video, I could easily see this as either 1) a highly effective classical composition, performed by modern chamber musicians with a great sense of groove, or 2) a very smart rock tune, in the progressive but drivingly groovy vein of Rush or Floyd.  As far as I can tell upon further research, Chatham's works tend to be performed in classical concert settings, which is interesting.  Are they sometimes performed in rock settings?  I hope so.

I can see that I've been clearly separating these two ideas of rock-ish classical music and classical-ish rock music, as designated by performance setting.  Does music NEED to be distinctly one or the other? No, but it usually is.  I have no idea how one would branch this gap.  One good step would be performing concert music in a rock setting or vice versa.  I've definitely seen that in a few places.  For instance, the prog rock percussion quartet Kraken, based in Ithaca, has been known to slip some concert music into their live shows, seamlessly with their rock tunes.  At a show last August, they used Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood and merged it into their own rock tune "Mad Libs."  They also used several movements of Jason Treuting's meditative work "Amid the Noise" as quieter parts of their show.  On a more famous note, one group doing things like this today is Radiohead, and especially its guitarist, Jonny Greenwood.  Greenwood has often been known to play Reich's Electric Counterpoint during otherwise rock concerts.  Greenwood is also an avant garde composer in his own right.  He is good friends with Krzysztof Penderecki, and the two have collaborated on several works together.  Greenwood is also an INCREDIBLY effective film composer, having scored Paul Thomas Anderson's most recent two films (There Will Be Blood and The Master) and Lynne Ramsay's film "We Need to Talk About Kevin."  But amidst all this, he is known to the world almost exclusively as the guitarist from Radiohead.

Jonny Greenwood performing Electric Counterpoint

at a rock show in Krakow, Poland, 9/11/2011

As a percussionist, I have never seen as much separation between rock music and classical music as I think many other musicians do.  We percussionists play an awful lot of rock-influenced music, all the time.  Plus, most of us also actually play rock music, and in a given day we will often work on both in the practice room.  We all talk about both, and rarely make much separation in discussions between them.  Our rep classes often include both rock--old and new--and concert music.  So we try to stay connected to both the "popular" idiom and the concert idiom, and mixing them is everyday.

One up-and-coming composer who is branching these divides is percussionist/composer Ivan Trevino.  Ivan is a recent graduate of the Eastman percussion studio, and he is currently EXPLODING in the percussion world.  In the past 2 years, he has gone from mostly unknown, to having his music performed at MOST music schools in the country.  There have been over a dozen performances of his works on IC student recitals this year alone.  All of Ivan's music is very audience-accessible, it all grooves really hard, and it all is basically rock music written for percussion instruments.  He is currently in the process of branching out into wind/brass and string instruments, but as of yet, all his music is for percussion.  Here is his work that has received the largest exposure, due to a well-publicized performance at PASIC 2013 (Percussive Arts Society International Convention).  The work is Catching Shadows, and is played here by the commissioner, the Eastman Percussion Ensemble (including several good friends of mine).

Catching Shadows (2013), Ivan Trevino

Performed by Eastman Percussion Ensemble, 11/2013

Little fun fact: the work started as a marimba duet, and I was lucky enough to perform it with its commissioner, Eastman Prof. Michael Burritt, about a week after he premiered it with Ivan.

Ivan's works are taking the percussion world by STORM right now.  Why?  Most people like rock music, and most percussionists love both rock and percussion music.  Mixing them seems obvious, but it hasn't been done this effectively and effortlessly until now.  And Ivan seems to be able to put forth these pieces unceasingly, each one as effective as the last.  The world is eating up his rock/classical music.

Even Reich has ventured down the road of rock music, to an extent.  His work 2x5, for the instrumentation of two rock bands (two groups each of two guitars, one electric bass, piano, and "drum set") is an incredibly beautiful and effective work.  Its sound is right in line with most of his compositions of the last decade or two, with the exception that the untuned percussion (drum set) part adds a purely rhythmic element that is mostly new.  It doesn't sound much like rock music, but it uses rock's timbres and palette, and takes some inspiration from it.  This is much more conservatively close to classical concert music, but pretty adventurous for a composer in his late 70s.

Reich's 2x5, performed by Bang On a Can All Stars

This performance is by Bang On a Can All-Stars, which for decades has been blending large elements of rock into concert music.  The ensemble, usually consisting of percussion (often drum set), guitar, bass, piano, cello, and clarinets, uses amplification, a sense of groove, and rock techniques and styles in a wide variety of compositions written for them, often by Bang On a Can founders David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon.  They are an INCREDIBLE joy to experience live, and I hope to see them many more times.  I have several times driven many hours to see them perform, and I would do that any number of times.  They're unbelievable.

Jazz and the Avant Garde

It seems quite natural to me that jazz would and should find common ground with both the worlds of experimental music and the avant garde.  As far as avant garde music goes, jazz is a rapidly developing art form the was invented only 100 years ago and has made rapid and tremendous strides since then in many different directions.  All of these directions were "avant garde" for a time, be it the first bop (Bird and Dizzy), the first cool jazz (the California scene), and more.  Jazz met with classical music in the works of several composers, especially Bernstein (who actually composed at least one work for big band, Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs), and Duke Ellington, a jazz composer/bandleader who composed several works for "classical" ensembles.  And where worlds like these collide, that is where we find a new area of the avant garde.

Bernstein, Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs (1949): composed for the Woody Herman band--part of the same project that also resulted in Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto

It was only a matter of time before jazz and the more adventurous region of the avant garde met and formed a union.  We see examples of this in many works of John Zorn, such as Forbidden Fruit (work for string quartet, with many jazz elements).

That said, it seems to me significantly more inevitable that jazz would meet with experimental music frequently and in a big way.  Both have strong ties with improvisation; both have required a great deal of physical invention in the last 100 years (new ensembles, new instruments e.g. drum set, etc);  both have required innovations in electronics (amplification of instruments for jazz, all sorts of stuff in experimentalism).  The key here is that both have a huge stress on musical play.  Jazz started as a way for talented musicians to make up stuff together, on the spot.  The earliest jazz was collective improvisation, with full groups improvising at once to create on-the-spot compositions.  Though collective improv is now rare in the jazz idiom, improvisation is still a key and central facet of the art form, and groups are flexible to adapt on the go during performances.  Similarly, experimental music has always been about playing with sounds, playing with electronics, playing around with instruments, and general interplay of musicians to create--always something new, always unexpected.

And though collective improv has all but died out in jazz, it has grown in experimental music in recent decades.  There are many groups dedicated to experimental improvisation.  A favorite of mine is Meridien, a trio consisting of Ithacan Nick Hennies, former Cornell professor Tim Feeney, and Greg Stuart.  

Meridien, in a performance from 2012

In fact, I am part of an experimental improv group called the Convergence Quintet, with fellow IC School of Music students Aaron Walters, Tom Smith, Andrew Hedge, and Christina Christiansen.  We hope to have some videos online at some point, but at the moment we have a recording from an early rehearsal that can be found here if you want to check it out sometime:

Convergence Quintet, "rehearsal" 10/26/13

All this goes to say that jazz and experimental music have vast amounts in common, especially a sense of play, and the idea of not knowing what exactly will happen in a work.  They were bound to meet, and in very colorful ways, like John Zorn's game piece Cobra.  I would sincerely love to play Cobra someday (emphasis on play).  It looks massively fun to be a part of.  I do not have any idea how exactly it works, but it must be fun when you're with a group of musicians who dedicate themselves to the piece alongside you.

Cobra also brings up the question of the line between music and performance art.  Sure, the players are all making sounds with musical interments, but so much of it is interplay between people and a very active referee, who does not play an instrument -- he only referees, which is much closer to acting than music-making (though perhaps now that I say that, an orchestral conductor may also be rather closer to an actor than a music-maker -- not sure what I think about this, but it's worth pondering.  Maybe when I'm less tired.)  This work relies on the acting, visual interplay, and outright performing in addition to the music to create its overall effect.  In this way, it is as much a work of performance art as it is a piece of music.

Electronic Music

As I began to look into several major examples of innovations in electronic music, something struck me: many of these composers seem very connected.  Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnik both helped found the San Francisco Tape Music Center.  Both also taught at Mills College.  Subotnik helped to found CalArts in 1969, and was its first Associate Dean.  David Rosenboom is currently a professor and Dean of the School of Music at CalArts.  Contrastingly, Alvin Lucier has been doing his own thing in Connecticut, and Varèse's career took him between much of Europe and various parts of the US, including NYC and the West Coast.

This tells me that electronic music is one area of music that did not relegate itself entirely to the New York scene, and whose principal development may have even been more central to the West Coast.  We have seen avant garde composers on the West Coast before now (Henry Cowell, LaMonte Young, etc.), but this is a movement for which the West Coast is central to its development.

I'll be honest, I have little interest in most of the important, pioneering steps in this movement, i.e. Varèse, Oliveros, etc.  I am not against it; I'm glad that this music exists, and I can certainly see how it might lead to music that would interest me more.  Why doesn't it interest me?  I can't be entirely certain, but I can try to examine it.  For the most part, there is nothing for me to grab onto.  Without a tonal center OR rhythmic pulse OR single drone or other sonic artifact that grounds it in one place, I find myself searching for something that isn't there.  Much of this music is arhythmic and atonal, but very busy.  Often when these conditions occur in music, I find myself lost in a sea of uninteresting confusion.  Lots of stuff is happening, but I can't find a reason or way to care about it.

Case and point here are works like Varèse's groundbreaking "Poème electronique" and Morton Subotnik's "Silver Apples of the Moon."  (Note: WIkipedia informs me that the Subotnik is important for being one of the first electronic works that IS rhythmic, but I hear most of its sounds as being utterly unrelated to the underlying, background pulsing.)  I hear a lot of interesting sounds here that would be interesting on their own, but they are thrown together with compositional intent that I can't even begin to fathom, and so it just sounds like unrelated sounds trying desperately to be related.

This brings me to Alvin Lucier, the only composer we are looking at today with whose work I can connect and find something interesting and worth listening to.  Our example of his work is Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977), a sound installation in which a piano string is stretched across a room, oscillators and magnets are coupled with it, and with these it produces a long, slowly changing tone.  To be honest, I don't fully understand the science of what's going on here, but it sets in motion a fascinating sonic experiment.  I can say the same of most of the several other Lucier pieces I have encountered.  In Music for a Solo Performer (1965), he attaches electrodes to his head in order to use his brainwaves as a method for controlling sound output through percussion instruments.  Again, I'm confused on the "how," but the "what" is very interesting.

Wonderfully overdramatic shot of Alvin Lucier at one end of the wire

Music for a Long Thin Wire sets up a deep sonic atmosphere.  I can start it, sit down, and zone in and out as it changes gradually.  I will listen intently for a while, then zone out for a bit, then be pulled back in as I hear it alter slightly.  I can understand the sonic process (minus the scientific details), and a composer's will is not getting in the way.  I think that too often, when music lacks such things as meter and any form of standardized pitch collection, the composer's will can easily get in the way of this music.

Lucier's words back this up consistently.  He doesn't want music to be about "Look what I can do;" he wants it to be about what can naturally occur when some parameters have been set up.  I connect with this easily.  It's the concert music equivalent of going outside, listening to birdsongs, and enjoying them as they are instead of wishing to write them into pieces for a purpose (sort of Cage vs. Messiaen there -- neither one right, but serving opposite goals).  As he says, "It's nothing to do with performers being virtuosi, or audiences having a good time by participation.  Rather, you're quiet and you pay attention." As for composers getting in the way of music, he says "Hammering and shaping materials never feels right to me….I'm concerned in music with exploration and discovery, rather than manipulation and control."  His pieces are built toward this, and they work incredibly well through that lens.  Maybe others will find this boring, and it's not like I want to listen to Lucier's music for 10 hours nonstop, but I really do find his works interesting to experience.  I also think that they can only truly work live, because a recording just doesn't convey what's physically going on, and doesn't carry the incredible timbal detail that is necessary in listening to his works.

Even Lucier's works that require a performer in the more traditional sense of the word follow his musical ideals.  For example, "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra" for amplified triangle is a study in the sounds of the triangle.  It asks the performer to beat the triangle repeatedly and evenly, while VERY gradually changing the beating spot, rate of striking, and use of muffling.  While the performer does change what they are doing over the course of the piece (via these parameters), it is gradual and allows for a sense of non-intention--simply gradually changing in a linear fashion to allow the triangle to do what it will.

Here's one great performance by an Ithacan, Nick Hennies: "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra" (1988) (the YouTube embed wasn't working).

Lucier's stress on disciplined attentiveness to gradually shifting sound patterns is a fascinating standpoint to pursue when listening to such music, and I really enjoy the music that arises from it.  That said, Oliveros et al's pursuit of ostensible randomness soaking in compositional intent does not interest me (though I'm glad it exists and some continue to pursue that avenue).

Minimalism and Performance Art

In his article "Minimalist: Aesthetic, Style, or Technique," Timothy Johnson discusses these three concepts as they apply to minimalist in the compositional world.  At first glance I had difficulty seeing what the distinctions would be, but upon reading it became clear.  It is essentially a question of whether minimalism is a toolbox, or a tool in a toolbox.  It asks whether a composer must choose for their palette to be a minimalism-specific set of methods, or whether minimalist methods may form just a part of their compositional style.

Before reading this article, I didn't realize this was a question.  I grew up in a world where minimalism already existed, and had for decades.  I grew up in a world where I heard Philip Glass via one of his film scores before I knew what minimalism was.  It never seemed radical or boundary-pushing to me.  Mark Swed wrote the following of composer Michael Torke:

"Torke represents a generation of young American composers who take Minimalism for granted and who came of age in an environment where the distinctions between pop and so-called serious musics did not have to be observed rigidly.  It is a generation for whom the tonality and atonality wars had already been fought, a generation as unselfconsciously at ease with the metric complexities of Stravinsky as with the repeated formulae and radiant harmonies of Philip Glass or with the brazen energy of Madonna."

The same applies to me.  As a result, I didn't know there was such strong debate about minimalism until well after I had acquainted myself with some of the music.  I also didn't know that Glass or Reich objected to the title until I already know some of their music.  When I learned that they hated the title, I was confounded.  I couldn't understand what was objectionable about being called minimalist.  Dr. Johnson's article clarified this for me, finally.  Evidently, minimalism was once seen as a very specific aesthetic.  Soon, this evolved into the notion of a self-contained style of composition.  I can see why a composer would have a problem with being labeled as such.  Glass and Reich were labeled into a box. They composed some music, then people told them that that exact music was what they were doing with their lives.  That leaves no room for growth or change, and it also was such a narrow definition that it even excluded some of their work that they had already written.

As a result, we came to see minimalism as a technique.  It is one tool in the compositional toolbox, which any composer may call upon, or use in whole or in part.  This is how I have always seen it, and I didn't know it was once seen another way.  Are there still musicians and scholars who view minimalism as a distinct and self-contained style or aesthetic?  I have listened for so long to so many composers who use elements of traditional, classic minimalism without emulating it outright.  I've heard such strong influences of classic 60s minimalism in the film scores of Clint Mansell and Michael Nyman; the meditative beauty of Arvo Pärt and John Luther Adams, the Bang On a Can scene populated by founders David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, and their comrades Evan Ziporyn and Ken Thomson; and the percussion writing of most percussion composers (Glenn Kotche, Paul Smadbeck, Eckhard Kopetzki, even Gordon Stout at times).

John Luther Adams, "Red Arc / Blue Veil"

Just one example of a work that definitely uses minimalist techniques,

without obeying all the attributes of the style or aesthetic.

Apparently some people would object to such works having the "m"-word attached to them.  This is crazy.  It just means that they share some influence and characteristics with the classic Reich/Riley/Young/Glass scene of the 1960s.  Now, decades later, even Glass and Reich go against the original definition of the minimalist style in the majority of their works.  Take a listen to a popular recent Reich work, his Mallet Quartet.

Mallet Quartet (2009), performed by So Percussion

Almost the entire duration of the work utilizes lengthy melodies, of anywhere from 2-16 measures in length.  Listen to the start of the work: the marimbas enter in a classic minimalist texture, interlocking pulses to create an aggregate framework or near-constant 8th notes.  Then the vibraphones enter, playing what is unmistakably a long melody.  This goes against the inside-the-box definitions of minimalism as aesthetic or style, neither of which allows for melodies of any real scope.

As a listener, I hear this in a completely different way from how I listen to Piano Phase or Music or 18 Musicians, for example.  Instead of wallowing in one tiny melodic/harmonic cell for a long time, I listen as a melody gradually unspools, then as soon as it finishes, another one takes its place.  This is a compositional world of change, not stagnation -- both this piece and the world of minimalist composition.

Similarly, take note of Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach.  It may not have a traditional dramatic narrative, but it definitely does have a sense of program.  It has something to say beyond the pure musical notes.  As Glass himself says, "What I saw in fact that we had done with Einstein was that, we had taken a person and made it the subject of the piece. It was a way in a certain way of: the person replaces the idea of plot, story.  In other words, the character of the person becomes what the piece is about."  This clearly goes against one of the tenets of early minimalism, which was strongly non-narrative, and never "about" anything other than the pure music.

As such, even the inventors of minimalism don't use it as a singular aesthetic or style.  Even for them, it is a technique.  Hasn't everyone always seen it that way?  If not, then I am proving my youth here, because I didn't realize we could see it as such a small box.  Perhaps Johnson's article was useful in its day for proving this point, but today, it seems redundant to my long-held absolute assumptions.


This brings me to the matter of performance art.  Performance art is arguably the most directly, strongly, and consistently political artistic medium.  Such a strong percentage of performance art has a political agenda.  Frank Skinner points this out with such instances as the Dada Manifesto as a way to subvert societal assumptions in a corrupt society, or Stuart Bristley's study of endurance called And for today…nothing, which apparently protested something about the governmental establishment.  This point of politics in music keeps arising, over and over again.  John Cage and HPSCHD; Cardew and The Great Learning; etc.  As Skinner says, "At the heart of performance art is strong social critique.  It asks important questions about how we perceive the world around us and our place within it."  Something I keep wondering, and always have, is this: Does this ever accomplish anything?

These artworks are not being used in governmental debates; they are not repurposed for politician campaigns; they are not evidence in arguments held in courts, international tribunals, environmental conventions or legislation meetings.  So why do we keep making such political art?  Is it simply because the artists feel so strongly about their opinion that they have a need to express it via performance?  To this, I say NO, because these political opinions are being expressed in aggressive and confrontational ways much of the time.  So can they accomplish anything, when they are only works of art viewed in artistic spheres?

The natural argument here, I think, would be for you to tell me that they cause people to think about the issues at hand, so that they will have more thought to bring to the table when the time comes for such discussion, debate, legislation, and governmental jurisdiction.  However, who is seeing these artworks? The educated and thoughtful.  These people don't need Nam June Paik to tell them to think about feminism, or Cage to tell them to think about environmentalism.  They are already thinking deeply about these and nearly any other important topic worthy of political discussion.  So who is being affected by the political nature of these works?  I can't think of anyone, but I sincerely want to here the contrarian opinion.  I feel like I am missing something here.  How can political art actually DO anything political?

"Mood Swing" (2014)

Today, I present to you my most recent composition, a graphically notated work for my American Avant Garde class.  Entitled Mood Swing, it is based around a game of frisbee.  The frisbee we will be using will function in four capacities, to be explained later:

1) to instruct method and vague details of sound production
2) to create of real-time, spontaneous, interpretive scoring via flight patterns
3) as a "found" graphic score
4) as an instrument in the work

The skeleton of the piece is fairly simple: 3 or more people throw the frisbee to one another, in any order.  Each person produces vocal sounds to interpret the frisbee's flight pattern as real-time score (#1) (for example, height = pitch, speed = intensity).  When the frisbee is thrown, each person makes sounds as it flies to represent the flight, then repeats these sounds when it is in the catcher's hands.  The types of sounds each person produces are determined by the notation on the frisbee when they catch it (#2).

The frisbee contains two types of instructions: emotions, represented by facial expressions, and types of vocal production (hum, shout, etc.)  Before the piece begins, each person tosses the frisbee in the air several times, choosing an emotion and a vocal production method by the randomized pictures near their hand where they catch the disc.  For the entire piece, each person has an emotion and a vocal production method.  Each time a player catches the frisbee, he or she changes their emotion or vocal method to whatever symbol is closest to his or her right thumb or index finger.  They use these emotions and vocal methods to vocalize the real-time notation of the frisbee's flight.  Each time it is thrown, everyone vocalizes.  Then, it is caught, and while the catcher examines his/her new result, the others repeat the same vocal flight path.  Next, that person throws it to the next person, and the process repeats.

There's an additional wrench thrown into this piece/game format.  There is one additional symbol on the disc: three exclamation points surrounded by a spiky bubble.  If you land on this symbol with a catch, then you perform a very brief solo.  To do so, toss the disc to yourself quickly.  Wherever your right thumb or index finger lands, look at the printed design on the frisbee in that area.  Use this as a small chunk of graphic score to perform, using any vocal production method, as well as the frisbee as an instrument (#3 / #4).  This printed design is thus being used as a "found" graphic score, as I realized after beginning to conceptualize this piece that the design on this particular frisbee is RIFE with capabilities as an interesting graphic score.

The person performs this bit of score as a solo, using the frisbee instrument and their voice however they want (approx. 3-10 seconds).  Next, the other players mimic the solo while the player starts to throw it to the next person, and the game continues.

When a player has performed 2 solos, he or she will sit down.  They have finished performing the piece, and wait for all players to finish.  When only one remains, he or she must continue to throw it to him- or herself until they too have performed two solos.  They must vocalize each of these throws on their own, making the ending of the piece likely to be a long solo by one person.  As such, the work begins with all players, then gradually peters down to just one, until all are sitting and the game is over.

I'm sure some of this is a tad unclear.  All will be clarified with the work's performance in class today.

the frisbee, before adding my additional notation 

detail, "found" graphic score 

Completed frisbee: note emotions (faces), vocal production methods (words),

and exclamation points to signal a solo

In Defense of Minimalism

I speak here on behalf of minimalism.  Typically, when I use the term, I am referring to minimalist, post-minimalist, totalism, and various strong minimalist tendencies outside the strictest sense of the genre.  That said, today I will be discussing the classic meaning of the term, referring to the innovations in the 1960s and 70s of major figures such as LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich.

A warning: this blog post is about to be biased.  Sure, all of mine are; but this is discussing some of my truly favorite music.  This is the music that I listen to when I want to relax; when I want to do some good active listening; when I want something for listening while going for a run; when I go for a long drive; when I want to procrastinate listening to music I should be studying.  This is music that I often prepare with chamber groups and as soloist, and program on recitals.  I have rarely had more fun playing music than when I've played In C, Clapping Music, Music for 18, and more.  In fact, when I was writing my previous blog post (on Cage's HPSCHD), I was listening to two of the assigned listening pieces for today's blog: Reich's Piano Phase and Music for 18 Musicians.  This was pure coincidence--I had no idea that the next blog would be about minimalism; I just wanted to listen to Music for 18 and Piano Phase (well, it was Marimba Phase, but it's just the same piece with different instrumentation).

(Go here for my favorite video of Marimba Phase.  I was at this performance, and it was spellbinding.  In a small but massively echoey church, the shifting pitch combinations resonated far longer than usual, and the result was beautiful.)

As Kyle Gann writes in his article "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact," minimalism gets a bad rap from the high-brow, academic music field.  This is not remotely fair.  In my experience, this is because it is "simple" and "tonal," instead of impenetrably complex and wildly atonal, and therefore does not help to push music forward.  In response, I would argue that just because it tends to have a sense of pitch centricity does not mean that it is not innovative, boundary-pushing, and worthwhile.  In addition, minimalist is, more than any other concert-based classical music, the music that can and does reach out to atypical audiences--and this is a very good thing.

Generally (with definite exception), minimalism tends to be "pretty"--that is to say, tonal/modal without an awful lot of chromaticism.  However, this is only an examination of pitch material--what about every other parameter of music? Texture, timbre, rhythm, meter, time, form, instrumentation, and so much more are massive aspects of music, but so often we only discuss pitch material when defining and discussing areas of music.  LaMonte Young innovated in form, timbre, tuning and instrumentation with The Well-Tuned Piano; Reich innovates in time with most of his works, such as Piano Phase, Clapping Music, all the way to his most recent works; Terry Riley hugely innovated in form with In C; Glass innovates in texture in all his oeuvre.  Why, then, should they be seen as composers of music that is less worthwhile than Boulez and Stockhausen?  Just because they have a fondness for repeat signs?

It is also important to note that minimalism is massively effective at reaching audiences who would not typically listen to concert music, much more so than any other area of concert music.  Could Babbitt have found himself composing a piece for Sesame Street?  Certainly not--but Philip Glass did, and it's awesome.

Glass, "Geometry of Circles," as aired on Sesame Street (1979)

Sure, it doesn't fit in with the general vibe of the show, but I'm betting that the kids who have seen this segment on this show during any of the multiple times it has aired have had a much more positive response than if it had been 20th century cutting-edge classical music of a different sort.  How often does cutting-edge contemporary music reach out to young children?  Almost never, and I love that minimalism has that power.

A personal anecdote: years ago, in freshman or sophomore year of high school, I was riding in my good friend Adam's car, and I was controlling the music.  Adam was always interested in the arts, but leaned more toward film, theater, and various areas of popular music.  He did not have much interest in "classical music."  I put on a recording of Reich's Vermont Counterpoint.

 Reich, "Vermont Counterpoint" (1982)

Adam was instantly transfixed.  It was groovy, fun, intense, and intelligent but followable.  I hooked him.  We didn't even finish the piece before arriving at our destination, and he was asking me everything about where he could find more like it.  Since then, I have taken him to Bang on a Can Concerts; we have seen the BSO premiere a new work at Tanglewood; I have seen Reich in concert with him twice; he has gone on his own accord to see So Percussion concerts; and he is an avid listener of Cage, Xenakis, Reich, Glass, and more.  Minimalism was the gateway drug for him into concert music, and he hasn't looked back.  I again attribute this to minimalism's power to reach out, without compromising its artistic integrity.  Some musicians seem to think that one has to pander, to lower one's art to reach the masses.  Minimalism negates this outright.

One more quick example.  Last year, I went on tour with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra to Long Island and NYC.  We made a stop at a Long Island High School to play a concert, and the next morning we had an informal session with the high school's musicians where chamber groups from the ICSO played works for the high schoolers.  The percussion section decided to play Clapping Music.  Our section leader, Chris Demetriou, quickly summarized the compositional process at play so that they could listen for the phasing and the re-syncing at the end.  The result?  The kids loved it.  All around the band room, they all were clearly enthusiastic about their applause, and a bunch of them came up to me afterward to talk about how cool it was.  Sure, at this point it's a bit of a novelty gimmick for us trained musicians, but for them it was new, it was understandable, and it was cool.  All from one of the earliest works in the genre of minimalism.

Another argument that the over-arrogant members of the music establishment often have against minimalism is that it has little variation.  I could not disagree more.  I look at the diversity between works like Music for 18 Musicians and The Well-Tuned Piano, and while both are pretty, they are different in nearly every other way.  One is rhythmic, metric, and groovy; the other ametric and improvisatory.  One is intense and driving, the other meditative.  One is six hours long, the other is one hour.  The differences are huge; they just both have enough common traits that they are both minimalist.  Minimalism only lacks variation if you don't listen for anything other than pitch material (though even then, the variety of scales, modes, and other devices can vary widely).

To conclude, in short: minimalism IS innovative, varied, intelligent, and worthwhile; and it reaches out to new audiences without compromising this, which adds infinitely more value to it.

Just for fun, I'll end this post with this: Clapping Music as you've never heard (or seen) it before.

HPSCHD: Cage as Social Activist, Anarchist, Wagnerian, and Anti-Wagnerian

On May 16, 1969, John Cage's event work HPSCHD occurred for the first time, in the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois (an arena generally used for the university's basketball team).  This was one of his largest undertakings to date, if not his largest, encompassing a vast array of harpsichords, electronic recordings and fixed media, projections, and more.  The audience moved as they wished around the performance space for the four hour duration, such that each person experienced the work differently, and took his or her own ideas to it and away from it.  In Sara Heimbecker's article "HPSCHD, Gesamtkunstwerk, and Utopia," she (hereafter referred to as Sara Haefeli, her present name) argues that the work was an example of both Cage's peaceful anarchist beliefs and activism, and of a full-on Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, albeit with minor differences.

In general, I agree with most of her assertions, and would like to take this blog post to pull out some points from the article for discussion, argument, etc.  For better or worse, these thoughts will run generally stream-of-consciousness in terms of organization, but hopefully different thoughts will be separated enough to avoid confusion.

Haefeli notes that the "narrative," in a broad, modern sense of the term, revolves around space travel.  This is certainly true, and links in with the avant garde's long-held fascination with science--from Cowell's piano tinkering to Varese's electronics to Partch's inventions.  This work occurred in the midst of the highest point of tensions in the space race, and its timing could not have been better.  In fact, only two months and four days after the HPSCHD event, the following event occurred:

Apollo 11, the mission that brought the first landing of humans on the moon, followed only 65 days after HPSCHD.  Indeed, it took off from Cape Canaveral exactly 2 months after Cage's work.  So this is one case of the avant-garde being highly in tune with major world events (even if Cage was not in tune with every major issue in the world--more on that later).

Cage described himself as a "Thoreauvian anarchist." He believed in a peaceful road to peaceful anarchy, wherein people live in such a way that everyone is free to live however he or she wishes, and experience life and the world however he or she wishes.  This requires the end of human-imposed ethical systems, such that all are free from judgment by others.  Toward that end, Cage said the following in an interview in the Chicago Daily News, 5/10/69:

Haas: But until people are ready for it, aren’t ethical systems needed?

Cage: Yes, but if we wait until that time, that time will never come.  Therefore we begin with that time in the fields where it is possible to do without such standards, such value judgments, to prepare the way—and art is one of them.

At first, I looked at this and thought, "Yes, that makes perfect sense."  Indeed, it's one of the first times I've been swayed to view art as something that could effect any real change with legitimacy.  Then, after some thought, all I could find was a question: In what other fields is it possible to remove value judgments?  One could argue for science, but in modern society it is inextricably linked with the attached ethics guiding every move.  I cannot think of any field other than art in which value judgments and ethical systems can be removed, and I do not think that doing so in art paved the way to allow for any other fields to follow suit.  As a result, while this quote seems soundly logical on the surface, it argues for paving the way for events that cannot follow.

That said, I'm all for removing value judgments in art.  It creates further uniqueness of individual experiences interfacing with the artwork.  It just doesn't seem to accomplish a goal set forth by Cage, to lead the way in removing ethical judgment from any other fields.  In art, such removal of imposed judgment can be seen in Cage's earlier collaborations with Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg.  In these collaborations, he would write a piece, Cunningham would create a dance, and Rauschenberg would create an art installation (such as the one below).  The dancer(s) would dance near and around Rauschenberg's artwork, set to Cage's music.

one such art installation by Rauschenberg

The three artists would not consult with each other regarding their individual works or artistic processes.  They simply created their works separately, then put them in the same place at the same time for the performance.  It was up to audience members to see connections (or not) between the works, which were all unintentional and dependent on the viewer's psyche to add to the scene.  In this way, they remove judgment of each other's work, as each one would make his or her part of the creation without judging how to connect it or disconnect it with the other two's works.  The pieces simply existed together, instead of containing built-in intention of artistic connection.

HPSCHD differs drastically from these artworks, as it was constructed under the overseeing and guidance of one artist, Cage, and every part centered around common themes.  It's a giant artwork where every piece of the puzzle comes together to say or be something about space.  This is antithetical to the nature of the Cage-Cunningham-Rauschenberg experiments, as everything has built-in intention from one artist's standpoint.  Even though he uses chance operations, they are chance operations of his devising in order to determine how exactly the details of the space theme should come together.  This is where we reach the beginning of the conclusion that Cage is creating his own Gesamtkunstwerk, as every facet of this massive multimedia work is working together toward one common goal.

Haefeli notes that one of the major differences between HPSCHD and the classic German Gesamtkunstwerk is that such works isolated people in a dark room and gave them all nearly identical perspectives on the work, whereas Cage's work allowed everyone to walk around individually to shape their own experience.  In this way, Cage was creating his artistic "anarchy," as all were free to live the experience as they saw fit.  As Charles Hamm noted,

“Each person made what he wanted of the piece and, thus, it was a different event for everyone who attended; each saw and heard it from the standpoint of when he was there, where he was in the hall, how long he stayed, whom he saw and talked with while there, what mood he was in, and what attitude he had about such events.”

I appreciate the Hamm is bringing into the equation an aspect of experience that I think members of the artistic community often ignore: "what mood he was in."  Too often we forget that a huge part of experiencing art is contingent upon what mood you are in already before the art is presented.  For example, I know that when I am in a bad mood, some works can clear that away, but usually it has a large effect on the art, either causing me to have a more aggressive or depressing interpretation of the work, or just causing me to pay less attention, as my mind is filled with other, negative thoughts.  I find that artists rarely ever discuss this in their studying of art, and this is an issue, as it is a huge part of how I experience the world of art.

That said, I disagree that any true anarchy of experience was achieved in HPSCHD--close, but not quite.  As Haefeli paraphrases of Yvonne Rainer, "The meaning of [the] work is set by the artist--not the audience, as participatory as that audience may be--'just as surely as any monolithic, unassailable, and properly validated masterpiece.' "  Indeed, Cage is controlling everything here, and guiding it toward certain vague messages (glorifying science, vaguely utopianizing space, etc.).  Cage's guiding motive in composing, in Haefeli's words, is as follows: "Instead of creating works that communicate a given message, Cage created opportunities for experience, opportunities to explore the multiplicity of intersections in which we live."  How can HPSCHD be true anarchy when it is not only a set of preconceived preconditions, but preconditions set by one man with messages in mind?  Can it really be truly, fully unique to each experiencer when Cage is behind every facet of it with preconceptions in his mind?  All are not free to have whatever experience they create--all are free to have whatever experience they create that concludes in the glorification of space as seen by John Cage.

Cage may have been aiming at true, full anarchy, but I think he missed his mark a bit.  I'd bet he could have reached it if he had made several more works of this scale and general formula (large, multimedia, wandering audience); however, this one does not truly reach the true anarchy of experience he may have envisioned.

Concert Review: Nick Hennies, Solo Percussion

Community School of Music and Arts

Ithaca, NY 2/27/14, 8 pm

Tonight, Nick Hennies made an inspiring entrance into the Ithaca's music scene. Playing thoughtfully experimental concert percussion music to an intimate crowd, he laid down some fascinating sounds for observation and meditation. Within an ostensible canvas of extreme minimalism, there was something new and fascinatingly beautiful to discover in each texture every second. I walked out of the concert refreshed, lost in thought, and vastly more open to the sounds of the world, which is exactly how I hope to walk out of any successful experimental music concert.

Nick moved to Ithaca just a few months ago from Austin, TX, where he was deeply entrenched in the experimental music scene. He owns and operates Weighter Recordings, which releases a variety of long, textural experimental music like his, and is a member of the percussion trio Meridian. He studied for his Master of Music degree with Steve Schick, regarded worldwide as the number one expert in multiple percussion music, and this intense concert percussion background clearly shows in Hennies’ care, performance atmosphere, and attention to extreme detail. I was fortunate enough to meet Nick last summer, when he directed a full performance of Cornelius Cardew’s massive work The Great Learning as part of Make Music New York 2013. Taking part in this brought me to see Nick’s artistic voice, and I knew he was someone worth watching for in the future.

For his debut concert in Ithaca, Nick performed a bipartite program. Each half consisted of the program for an album he has recorded. The first half was the program for his most recent album, “Duets for Solo Snare Drum” (Weighter Recordings, 2013), and the second half of the concert consisted of the program from his release “Psalms” (Roeba, 2010). The “Duets for Solo Snare Drum” are three solo works for snare drum accompanied by another element. Two are accompanied by a non-performative element: silence (Cage’s “One4”) and static noise (Ablinger’s “Snare Drum and FM Noise”); and one is accompanied for part of its duration by three other drone/noise-producing performers (Hennies’ own “Cast and Work”).

The Cage work was classic Cage, inviting the audience to listen to individual, discrete sounds with silence between each. Hennies demonstrated some unique methods of drum sound production. For example, he placed a long, thin metal object with one end on the head and one end hanging over the edge, then bowed the portion hanging off the drum to produce resonant frequencies of both the object and the drum. Ablinger’s work for snare and static noise was a one lone texture of snare drum, excited by the hands, blending its timbre into amplified radio static and alternating with periods of silence. This was perhaps the least effective work of the concert for me, as the snare drum seemed to make little difference to the work, and only served to visually distract from my concentration on listening to the static.

Hennies’ work “Cast and Work” is a 25-minute roll on the drum, snares off, with fixed media component consisting of a nearly unchanging drone. This is the work on the concert that took me by surprise and threw me for a loop. Hennies roll invited me into a sound world of constantly shifting emphases on different overtones of the drumheads and their interactions with the drone. The head sound reverberated around the large, resonant room, and as it did so, irregular sustains began to emerge. I was brought into a deeply meditative state, as I believe is an intended result of the music. Finally, 15 minutes into the roll, the three other musicians entered. One played a rebab (bowed Gamelan string instrument), one played a tin can, and one manipulated a fascinating noisemaking contraption of cymbals perched atop tensed spring coils. These were used as repetitive noise producers. As a listener, I am NOT normally one to attach my own narrative to pieces that do not explicitly have intended, grounded narrative. Having said that, I was shocked to find an immediate, narrative response the instant the other musicians entered. Suddenly, I was on the production floor of a factory or mill, with all the machines humming, whirring, whining, and rattling around me. The snare drum and fixed media were the general hum of the constant unchanging machinery (perhaps heating or cooling), while the other three musicians represented the regular repetition of cyclically acting machines. I found myself suddenly transported to this world, and after several minutes of it with my eyes closed, I managed for several seconds to really believe that I was simply in a factory, production whirring along full steam ahead, while I enjoyed the steady noises of the industrial equipment.

The second half consisted of five works, all directly based on Alvin Lucier’s famed “Silver Streetcar of the Orchestra” for solo triangle. Each work was for one solo percussion instrument (vibraphone, snare drum, woodblock, triangle, vibraphone again). Lucier’s work was included, and the other four were composed by Hennies. All followed the compositional design of the Lucier, with moderately fast constant notes used to highlight gradual changes in timbre. Hennies transitioned without pause from each piece to the next, which was effective in connecting them sonically and ideologically.

Particularly of note was Hennies’ “Psalm 1” for vibraphone. As Hennies hammered away at the barrage of notes, the instrument’s sustain echoed around the wonderfully reverberant room. The damper was removed from the instrument altogether. Sustained sounds came in irregular waves, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes for several full seconds before receding into only attack sounds. Different overtones came to light, and would occasionally overpower those normally audible on the instrument. This was sometimes due to Hennies’ careful stroke placement on the bars, and sometimes simply due to chance echoing and my ear’s tendency to wander across different overtones when hearing one sound repeatedly for so long. What I know for certain is that I heard different aspects to the vibraphone’s sound that I haven’t properly listened to before. The works for snare drum and woodblock were also effective, and the Lucier was fascinating as always. Ending on vibraphone brought obvious but satisfying cyclical unity to this half of the program.

Hennies plans to put on at least several concerts per year. Some will be shows by other musicians or groups (he’s bringing organ and electronics duo Coppice on March 21), and some will be solo shows for him. I look forward immensely to whatever Nick plans to put on in town; he has a distinctive and worthwhile voice that is a welcome addition to Ithaca’s ever-eclectic music scene.

Nick Hennies: http://www.nhennies.com

Weighter Recordings: http://www.weighterrecordings.com

Graphic Notation

Graphic notation is, for me, one of the largest innovations to classical music in the last century.  I speak not only about scores that look entirely like abstract art, but also the freedom to include new symbols and imagery in an otherwise standard score, which can be highly useful in clarifying meaning.  The most profound strength I see in graphic notation is that it can serve to provide more or less specificity, more or less instruction, more or less intention to composition.  For example, Morton Feldman uses graphic scores to make things less specific, by giving times when events should happen but letting the performer realize the specifics in his or her own way around the right time.

Morton Feldman, "King of Denmark" (1964)

Contrastingly, Penderecki uses elements of graphic scoring to show pitch continuum locations more specifically than traditional notation can.

Penderecki, "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" (1960): specificity through

combination of traditional and non-tradition notational ideas

In this way, there is more freedom in opening one's notation to non-traditional methods, because the composer can choose precisely how precise he or she wants to be, from widely open-ended to minutely exact.

Graphic notation also creates an easy bridge between two worlds of art, which is, in my opinion, a very good thing.  The world of artists often has unfortunately strong imaginary borders, so opportunities to bridge these borders are great.  This is a great way to rope visual artists into becoming composers, rope composers into becoming visual artists, interesting performers more deeply in visual arts, and more.  The other wonderful thing is that you don't have to be deeply entrenched in any area(s) of the art world to dive into graphic notation.  If you have no background in the arts but a definite interest, you can make a graphic score.  All you need is a musician friend (or generally artistically adventurous non-musician), and your work of art can be realized.  Bridging all these borders is fun and can open one's eyes suddenly into areas someone in our field might not necessarily bring us.

Speaking as a music student, I wish all music students spent at least a little time interpreting and working on graphic scores.  When I play them, I often quickly stagnate in my ideas for interpretation, and my creative mind has to go on overdrive in order for me to keep my performing interesting to myself.  This has done wonders for my improvising skills, and I think it would be a fantastic mental and artistic exercise for all musicians to undergo.

Unfortunately, I have not worked much yet with graphic scores.  I have only premiered one work for graphic score (Kayleigh McKay's "The Viola Tango" (2012/13), for solo performer playing viola).  I have looked through some others, read through a couple, and seen many performances of many works. My favorite experience with alternate notation has been performing Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning" as part of Make Music New York 2013.  One major aspect of Cardew's work that I love is that it explores a wide variety of notational systems: traditional notation, purely graphic scoring, a halfway point between the two, instructional scoring, and more.

Cardew, "The Great Learning" (1971), Paragraph 1

semi-graphic notation in top and middle parts; fairly traditional notation on bottom (organ) part

Cardew, "The Great Learning" (1971), Paragraph 6

instructional score

Cardew, "The Great Learning" (1971), Paragraph 7

instructional, with light elements of graphic scoring

In this work, every movement was a very different challenge to decode, and that was where much of the fun was.  Each movement was a new experiment and a new experience, and brought a new sense of playing, often through the vast differences in notation.

Having said all this, I'll be honest: I've had much more fun with my experiences in instructional scores than with graphic scores.  Having worked on Wolff's "Sticks" and "Stones," various movements of Cardew's "The Great Learning," premiered a work for solo performer in offstage closet (Alex Cronis's "The Day We Stopped Talking," 2013), read through Tim Feeney's "Still Life," and written a couple small instructional works myself, I've taken more out of these and felt like I was able to make better performances.  I'm not certain about why.  Perhaps I'm reticent to improvise when given too much context of how to do it (specific durations, contours, etc; needing to adhere to a score in time), and prefer to improvise when given more freedom.  I'd say I definitely enjoy being able to study a set of instructions in great depth, make a detailed plan about my realization of it, then just go without having to stick constantly to a score in front of me.  Instructional scores, like graphic scores, can connect us to other arts (writing), as well as roping in non-musicians (who need only know how to read and write in a language in order to compose such music, and often to perform it as well).

Finally, I'd like to briefly address the question of labeling graphic scores: is the "composer" really a composer?  Is the performer the composer?  Who writes the music?  I'd like to submit that these questions don't matter.  I think this is a point where labeling becomes a hindrance to discussion.  Labeling should exist to clarify discussion and debate; however, in this case, we do not need to answer these questions in order to communicate clearly about this art and our opinions on it.  I don't care whether I should call the writer of the score a "composer," "facilitator," or just "artist"; I don't care whether I should call the performer a "composer/performer" or perhaps "realizer."  I care whether I find it interesting and worthwhile, and why; and I care whether someone else finds it interesting and worthwhile, and why, so that we can discuss it.  The rest of the answers to such questions would only distract the conversation from the actual art at hand.

The New York School

Cage was the central composer of a group considered the "New York School."  The other members of this group are Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, and Morton Feldman.  Of these, Wolff is still alive today, while the others have all been dead for years.  All four are interested in a focus on individual sounds, graphic scores, new notation, and silence as a compositional device.  All four influenced each of the others.

Feldman's individual signatures among the group are his specific notational grids, and his focus on quiet music.  His multiple percussion work "King of Denmark" (1964) is a perfect microcosm of most aspects of his major styles.  This work (along with many, many of his others) is:

-quiet
-rhythmically floating
-calm
-timbrally explorative
-notated with a time- and range-based grid

In this work and many others, Feldman's notational grid is specific about certain parameters while vague about others.  He writes indeterminate rhythms (____ number of notes) with determinate durations (____ number of notes over the course of ____ seconds).  He writes indeterminate pitches with determinate ranges (split up as high, medium, and low).  Within this grid, he offers some articulations, and other notes without much or anything in the way of instruction.

Feldman uses all these notational and compositional techniques in many other works, including this specific type of grid.  He was never interested in loud music, always seeking out quiet sounds.  In fact, he saw "King of Denmark" as a sort of "silent resistance" to other, louder percussion music.

The work bears an important role in percussion history.  The chronology of the invention of multiple percussion is as follows:

1) 1956: Cage composes the first multi percussion work: 27’10.554” for a Percussionist

           Samuel Z. Solomon performing 27'10.554" for a Percussionist

2) 1959: Stockhausen, Zyklus

Steve Schick performing Zyklus

3) 1962: Cage’s work 27’… is premiered

4) 1964: Feldman writes King of Denmark, his “response” to Zyklus

IC alumnus Marco Schirripa performs King of Denmark

Zyklus is often loud, always very active, and expressionist; King of Denmark is always quiet usually fairly inactive, and not at all expressive.  Feldman wrote the work while relaxing on the beach, in reaction to hearing the disparate and distant sounds of life.  It holds the distinction of being the third work ever for the medium of solo multiple percussion, and in being so, set the precedent that not all percussion works need to be loud or rhythmically driving.  For this, I am grateful, because if all percussion writing were loud and rhythmically driving (as is tempting when writing for percussion instruments), our art form would stagnate and be unnecessarily dull.

It is also important that this work has an open instrumentation, which set the scene for massive amounts of open instrumentation percussion works to come.  Sometimes, as a percussionist, it is difficult to remember that compositional elements like open instrumentation haven't always been around, and were at one time radical innovations.  This work and Cage's 27'… both have some openness of instrumentation, and were among the first works to do so.

The title "King of Denmark" refers to the story of King Christian X of Denmark wearing a yellow star as a "silent resistance" to the Nazis as they took over his country and oppressed those people who were forced to wear yellow stars.  The story is urban legend, and not at all true; however, it sets the scene for Feldman's "silent resistance" to Stockhausen's Zyklus.