I'm still working my way through the new Taruskin collection Musical Lives and Times Examined, now over halfway. I just finished a short piece, a review of Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story--How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War by Nigel Cliff. Just looking at that title you can guess that Taruskin is going to have a lot to say about that "Cold War." But he usually delivers much more than one expects and does so here. He provides a well-founded estimate of both Cliburn's strengths (by training he was as close as an American could get to being a Russian pianist) and weaknesses (the pressures of his unique career turned him into a "flesh and blood juke box"). But even better than that, in a couple of paragraphs he discerns the landscape of classical music in society since the 60s:
The strongest reaction I felt while reading this book was a pang of recognition that classical music is no longer seen, even fatuously, as an arena for national policy. It no longer represents nations, only (often rapacious) elites. That, rather than the end of superpower competition, is the big change that Cliburn's decline symbolizes. He was indeed a significant figure, and worthy of a book that says so, but Cliff puts him in the wrong context. He was the protagonist--or perhaps, more accurately, the figurehead--of the moment when classical music enjoyed a pinnacle of popularity and prestige from which it would plummet almost immediately. The sixties were the decade in which, as sociologists have shown and sought to explain, big changes in musical taste and consumption patterns, reflecting changes in demography and social attitudes, caused classical music to return to its tiny social niche after a couple of decades of pumped-up status vouchsafed by the New Deal and the touting of middlebrow culture.
Educated people, who until the 1960s habitually "graduated" from popular music to genres with higher social status--classical, jazz, coffeehouse "folk"--upon entering college, began retaining their popular music allegiances into adulthood, as they still do. Since then, no classical musician who was not already popular in the 1950s (perhaps only Leonard Bernstein besides Cliburn) has figured as a mass cultural or political icon, and such icons as still existed were worshiped nostalgically, by aging fans. [Taruskin, op. cit. p. 317]
Which rather makes me realize how out of step I have been, my entire career. In the 1960s I was a big fan of The Beatles and other popular music, but around 1969 I stumbled across classical music--not for any sociological or demographic reasons, but simply because the music affected me more intensely and in many more different ways than popular music. And I have basically stayed the course on that for my whole life. Yes, I guess I do feel I occupy a tiny social niche, but it is certainly not one with any elite status whatsoever let alone a "rapacious" one. I retain the tiny social hope that some of my compositions might reach others trapped in their tiny social niche!
Just a personal note: this week I had a video conference call with the string quartet in Vancouver who will be premiering my new quartet in May. They had a lot of questions about the second movement. Here is part of the score so you can see the problem:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
This is in moment form, but there are a lot of different ways of skinning that cat. Interestingly, moment form dates from a piece by Stockhausen called Momente that was composed between 1962 and 1969. I probably read about it in a history of 20th century music sometime in the early 70s and I certainly heard some student composer versions between 1971 and 1973. I encountered moment form as a performer around 1980 in a piece for flute and guitar by Anthony Genge. Here is that piece:
The score consists of three pages, each of which is a "movement." The top half of each page has a number of "moments" for the flute and the bottom half the same for the guitar. You play the moments in any order. Some consist of rests. Around that time I wrote my first piece in moment form, organized more as a flow-chart. The moments were arranged in a stream, connected by lines and the conductor signaled which performers were to play which level. The piece was for guitar orchestra. Here is a performance of that work:
My piece Dark Dream for violin and guitar has a brief section in moment form which is structured like Night Rain. In the string quartet, the players start, either in the center or at the periphery and follow the spiral to the other end. Then you can go back, if you wish. There is considerable room for improvisation as each moment is like a kernel or seed that can be expanded on. As I said to the quartet the other day, the cool thing about this piece is that, as of this moment, there is absolutely no performance practice tradition, so we get to invent one.
They looked at me a bit wide-eyed after that...
Not sure what he means by classical music representing rapacious elites. Since when has it done that? I've never found the slightest socio-political advantage to participating, or having an interest, in classical music; it may even be a disadvantage.
ReplyDeleteThe extract confirms my own (unexceptional) view that the sixties was not just another historical era but a revolution setting a new precedent. As far as I know, 80 year-olds in ~1950 weren't packing stadiums go hear performances of When Father Papered the Parlour or whatever other music was most popular. Yet 80 year olds, and many others besides, crowd to see the Rolling Stones now. I wonder if any young to middle-aged person in 1963 would have recognised the names of the most popular musicians and pieces from 1903, let alone be 'fans' of such music? Yet sitting here in 2023, I and most others would recognise names and works from a 1963 chart -- or from most years in that decade. This music has now superseded classical music as the principal inherited musical tradition.
The coronation -- one month today, as it happens -- will be interesting in this regard. Full details of the service have yet to be released, but we have some drops of information. It seems clear that, like in 1953, the service will have loads and loads of music. And it looks to be overwhelmingly classical, still (though I remain doubtful it will have quite the same splendour and majesty of 1953). We'll see how people react. Will there be a sense that it is outdated, just nostalgia at best? Will people even be interested? Will any of the music enter the wider culture? Back to Taruskin, will it be seen as representing the nation or a 'rapacious elite'? Will it be as powerful, to most people, as a stadium concert? Will it be discomfiting, like that Simon Leys anecdote where cafe speakers accidentally started playing Mozart, and the beauty of it became upsetting and someone had to change the channel back to some soulless pop music? Seventy years since Elizabeth II's coronation, we will have a historical comparison like no other (especially as we are the last European country to do coronations!)
Re moment form, I do have a slightly difficult time getting my head round the idea, at least from a compositional standpoint. How do you go about imagining how it will sound, when you write it?
ReplyDeleteYes, like you I feel no part of a "rapacious elite." He might be referring to the ancien regime, pre-French Revolution. Very good points about who is packing stadiums now--are they really 80 year olds?
ReplyDeleteI heard that Andrew Lloyd Webber was commissioned to write something for the coronation? Not sure what that implies.
I am a Simon Leys fan--where is that anecdote found?
Yes, moment form is conceptually different. You don't imagine a specific thing as there are a spectrum of possibilities, all of which might occur. What I like about it is it is a very good way to achieve a kind of floating, atmospheric effect.
"He might be referring to the ancien regime, pre-French Revolution."
ReplyDeleteEven in the 19th century, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire there was still a strict divide between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the peasantry on the other (and the peasantry was the vast majority of the population in parts). It would have been unacceptable for the peasantry to enter most of the venues where classical music was performed: their bearing, their speech, and their dress would keep them out.
Somewhere in his essay collection The Halls of Uselessness -- I think the essay might have been called An Empire of Ugliness.
ReplyDeleteMany are certainly old, and as I haven't been to such a concert in many years, I only assume they are now even older! When I went to rock concerts -- of the old groups, Alice Cooper, Springsteen, Zombies, Yes, many many others... -- the demographic wasn't that dissimilar to say, my local choral society (except that the latter has more women). There was an interesting article recently about the demographic problems facing rock music: https://quillette.com/2023/03/02/re-genesis/
Lloyd Webber is one of about a dozen, some of whom are much better. Unfortunately the King has steered clear of more adventurous composers -- not even James MacMillan! The 1953 coronation commissioned work by Vaughan-Williams, Walton, Bliss, and Howells... It does seem that there will be many more commissioned works this time, and they are all either classical or, erm, classical-adjacent. I'm remaining optimistic... A few duds will be forgotten and drowned out by the rest. And many of the old classics will of course return. And Monteverdi singers will be there, cathedral choirs, Pappano conducting orchestra...
But surely you imagine something? How do you decide on the notes for each moment -- is there a overall harmonic plan, perhaps? I cannot seem to get my head round the idea, especially for four instruments!
Good memory, Steven, yes that's exactly where it is pp 41-2. Wonderful anecdote. I'm going to steal a quote from it.
ReplyDeleteSteven, the quartet are also having difficulty getting their heads around the piece. I'm due to check in with them in a couple of weeks so we will see how they are doing.
I think you are ensnarled in the coils of Werktreue! This is a late romantic and modernist concept that a musical work has a real, specific meaning:
"At the heart of Werktreue is the idea that a work has a “real meaning” (Goehr, 232). The composer’s intent, which the composer may illustrate through program notes, specific techniques, written notes in the score, etc., shapes the “real meaning” of the work. According to Goehr, “musical works as abstract concepts required adequate realization in performance if they were to prove themselves worthy of being called ‘fine works of art’”
Anything containing, for example, graphic notation (such as we find in early Morton Feldman or Earle Brown, plus lots of John Cage) cannot be considered a real work of art by the requirements of Werktreue. Taruskin talks about this somewhere.
But actually, my Moments in the Forest does have, sort of, a harmonic plan. If you notice the first and last and every eighth moment is a whole note. The instructions are to pause on each of these until all the instruments arrive. So there is a harmonic progression. This same harmonic progression is found in the first movement. But for most of the time what we have is atmosphere, textures, little mysterious sounds... Just like being in an old growth forest on the coast of British Columbia.
Glad I got it right! Leys is a memorable writer. His essays on Don Quixote and Chesterton are still stuck in my mind years later. So is his brilliant little novella The Death of Napoleon.
ReplyDeleteI certainly hope I'm not 'ensnarled in the coils of Werktreue'! Sounds excruciating. I certainly don't hold the score as sovereign, say. But that is usually about allowing performers freedom to alter and ajdust details within a designed framework. Moment form is more like the opposite: instructing players about the details but giving them great freedom with the overall structure.
Maybe it's just a technical or imaginative limitation on own part. The gap seems so large between what one is composing and the actual sound that *might* be produced.
Though the analogy with a forest is useful (I hadn't noticed that was the title until now...) I guess I think about composing from the top-down, overall structure, cohesion etc. Whereas here -- in rather a libertarian way, dare I say! -- the individual units of music are what matter and the structure or organisation that results is secondary.
Creativity in notation was one of the obsessions of modernism. Think of some of the glorious scores from Stockhausen, Sylvano Bussotti or George Crumb and the wildly eccentric ones from John Cage or Morton Feldman. Incidentally, Tony Genge was a student of Feldman (and later Takemitsu).
ReplyDeleteThere are different kinds of notation for different purposes. Taruskin discussed how the development of notation for plainchant had a lot to do with the imposing of the versions from the Roman rite on the outlying communities. In the 20th century, composers used notation to move outside the usual or conventional. What we call "music notation" is also sometimes called "vocal notation" as it is adapted to use by singers. Alongside it for centuries existed a different kind of notation called tablature for lute, vihuela and keyboard. Tablature does not indicate a particular sound, but rather a particular fret on a particular string. It is therefore "action" notation. You might think of graphic notation as being a distant cousin: a particular sign or image might be saying "make a sound that corresponds to this image." It suggests that the mood or expression is more important than a particular note or group of notes. You can also construct a notation that is more the rules for the game of inventing a piece of music. Instead of what Wittgenstein calls a "language game" (the way a language might be used) it is a "music" or "notation" game. Put these notes with this text in some way. An example of this is the piece Stimmung by Stockhausen.
And way out on the fringes of notation are those little instructions by LaMont Young like "hold a note for a long time."
Yes I understand -- in theory. The comparison you give with setting rules as in a game is useful. So it's like playing on a big open field rather than finding a linear path to somewhere. It is a fun idea. And I like various pieces written in this or similar ways, including Stimmung. Probably the best thing I can do is try sketching something myself; I've always wanted to try something Cage-esque...
ReplyDeleteYes! Another convert to moment form! Or actually, my first. I am completely convinced that how you choose to sketch and notate a piece has a huge influence on how it turns out. So experimenting is likely useful.
ReplyDeleteAs an example, to solve my problem with writing for solo guitar, I have gone back to the old way of improvising on the instrument followed by pencil sketches--and it is really working out for me.