Category Archives: Music
The World’s Ugliest Music? Nice Try . . .
So Dr. Scott Rickard thinks he’s composed the world’s ugliest music using fancy math. I’m not convinced, but you can hear for yourself: the piece, written for piano, starts at 7’48.
Rickard is not the only one to use fancy math to write music. Most notably, Iannis Xenakis beat him to the punch nearly sixty years ago. Nor is it the only piece to rely on chaos to make itself unpredictable. Alvin Lucier’s “Music on a Long Thin Wire” does that pretty well, too. In both Xenakis and Lucier, there’s an elemental beauty I find attractive (even though I wouldn’t want to listen solely to their work), and Rickard’s new work, I would argue, fits in that vein—that is, making music out of non-musical processes.
Concerning Rickard’s “pattern-free” claim, that’s certainly true if you’re looking for motives, but Mr. Rickard clearly hasn’t read Meta-Hodos (in addition, at 6’12, to misrepresenting Schoenberg’s motivation in creating the twelve-tone method. Fail.). Try as he might, he can’t de-musical-ize music. As Tenney explains, because Rickard’s materials are differentiated, relationships inevitably emerge. The most simple of these inadvertent relationships is agogic accent. While the piano piece has no definitive melodic cadences, it does have clear clusters of events, the boundaries of which are determined by the longest note in a local area. To my ears, it sounds like a series of elided phrases. Another set of relationships emerges because of the clear differentiation of registers. Particularly at the extremes of register, you hear a sense of interrupted continuity. The notes group themselves because they sound similar with respect to pitch-height. To put it simply, “random notes” can never sound random.
That said, even though I hear musical patterns within the texture, I don’t think these relationships are nearly as important as the overall sweep of the piece—in the same way that, although you can segment a performance of “Music on a Long Thin Wire,” the segmentation of it isn’t really the point. In fact, I would say that Rickard was actually quite successful in creating a work in the “acoustical positivist” vein. In both the Lucier and the Rickard, the sum texture, incorporating all internal variation, is the music. What makes such works beautiful is that even though they are, in effect, static objects, you don’t experience them statically. Only on reflection do you realize, “Wait, this is all of a whole.” There’s a serenity to such music that’s quite similar to listening to a stream or the wind (a comparison that, if I remember correctly, Lucier himself makes).
Now, if you really want to write an ugly piece of music, your best bet is to go the route of tedium. The careful use of repetition gives you a far better foundation with which to defy expectations and create a perpetual sense of anticlimax. Throw in some bad voice-leading and gratuitous dissonance, and you’re on your way. Incidentally, another group of scientists did something like this, although they approached the effect on a tangent.
Also incidentally, I really need to go to bed. So good night.
Music Theory for the Twenty-first Century
(I wrote this blog post during the SOPA/PIPA internet blackout, and, WordPress being out, I couldn’t post it till later. Along with millions of others, I oppose those bills.)
The main exposition of James Tenney’s theory occurs in Meta-Hodos. The title is as daunting as the prose is dense, but the ideas it contains are deeply insightful.
On Tuesday, I presented a paper at BYU’s composition seminar about James Tenney and the theoretical system he developed. Without getting into its specifics (which manage to be both simple and complicated), suffice it to say that Tenney presents a highly flexible analytical system that enables its users to gain insight in practically any style of music. After describing its workings to the seminar, someone raised the criticism that the system is mostly descriptive and didn’t reflect what the composers were thinking, two criteria he hoped to see in a “music theory for the twenty-first century,” which claim I made for Tenney’s theory.
While I can see the value of his second point (after all, it is one of the major aims of musicology), I disagree with the first and maintain that Tenney’s theory is the kind of thing that twenty-first century musicians need. When I look at the way that I and many of my contemporaries listen to music, some things stand out. We listen to, and love without shame, a wide range of music that is eclectic not only because of its diverse sounds but also because of its varied reception among different social spheres. In other words, when we listen to music, what its creator intended and its circumstances of creation are largely irrelevant: everything gets thrown together into a decontextualized mix, the only common thread of which—electronic recording—further decontextualizes the pre-twentieth-century repertoire.
We really don’t experience music the way Beethoven intended. Beethoven didn’t compose a microphone part or a post-production mix for the Eroica. Even our acoustic performances will be different because our ears live in a foreign world. Beethoven’s performers couldn’t even imagine Coldplay, Miles Davis, or Claude Debussy, let alone the sounds of airplanes and refrigerators. While Beethoven’s intent is nice to know, that’s a job for musicologists and HIP-sters, not composers and theorists. Composers and theorists are responsible to address their needs of their age rather than the concerns of ages past.
Which leads me to the first criticism, of Tenney’s theory being merely descriptive. I question the very premise of this criticism: namely the distinction between description and evaluation. The use of any descriptive lens is itself an evaluation, declaring what is and isn’t worth examining. After that choice, the evaluation is limited based on what the model can describe. Theories can only effectively evaluative material within the descriptive framework they establish.
From a twenty-first century perspective, the failure of most analytical systems is that their descriptive focus comes laden with stylistic assumptions. For instance, traditional common-practice theory does a great job of describing and evaluate part-writing in that style, but grows progressively useless the more sound- or rhythm-based a repertoire is.
In contrast, Tenney’s theory enables you to look at music relative to itself rather than imposing outside criteria. It has equal power to reveal the organizing factors in Beethoven, Boulez, and the Beatles. Such eclecticism is the reality of our cultural situation. Because Tenney’s theory reflects this and enables us to make sense of our times’ stylistic catholicism, it warrants the moniker I gave it, as the music theory for the twenty-first century.
(For those interested in learning more, I’ve uploaded my term paper about it, which is probably the best place to start, considering the density of the primary sources.)
Field Guide Premieres in Utah
Less than a week after the successful premiere of my Clarinet Sonata (Kudos to Jaren Hinckley and Jed Moss! It was an electrifying performance!), A Field Guide to Natural History just received its Utah premiere this past week as part of BYU’s Group for New Music concerts. For those who weren’t there or who want to relive the experience, you now can in image . . .
An editor would use a red pencil as a baton. (Photo courtesy: Steve Ricks)
. . . and in sound:
Many thanks to the performers, Eric Hansen, Ray Smith, Scott Holden, and Ron Brough (whose head is hidden behind a music stand) and, of course, to the Barlow Endowment for making the night possible! As with the Clarinet Sonata, it was another great performance.
In other news, the BYU Chamber Orchestra recently began rehearsals of my still nameless violin concerto. Name suggestions are most welcome.
Countdown to San Francisco: 5 days
Nine days and four rehearsals later, A Field Guide to Natural History is coming together. On Thursday, it was decided that I would conduct; on Friday, we cut out two more movements; yesterday, we had our first uninterrupted run through; and today, we began to work in earnest on expressive details. Tomorrow will be our last rehearsal in Provo.
The crew at rehearsal for Eric Hansen’s recital (left to right): Eric Hansen, Scott Holden, David Kjar, Ron Brough.
As I expected, the guys have done a great job pulling the piece together. I’m also excited for the other pieces on the program. Eric wrote a great one for himself, Dave, and Ron (on bass, clarinet, and marimba respectively), and Dave brought a cool jazz tune of his. All together, Eric’s put together a great recital.
Funny story about the rehearsals: I hadn’t conducted instrumentalists for years, so I was a bit nervous about the undertaking. Last night, I told this to a friend, who was surprised I wasn’t immediately confident at conducting my own piece. “After all,” she said, “you wrote it.”
Her logic reminded me of the time in sixth grade when I wrote this tie fighter video game in QBasic. The premise was simple: You’re a tie fighter at the top of the screen. You had to hit the x-wings and a-wings flying and shooting at you before they reached you. I installed it on a computer in my classroom, where, to my teacher’s dismay, it became quite popular. After a few weeks, people were surprised I didn’t have the high score: “After all, you wrote it.”
“But writing it doesn’t mean I’m good at it,” I protested.
Some things never change.
Twice in One Night
In case you haven’t been following my concert schedule (though that’s silly—of course you have!), the next six days will feature four performances of my music, including one night, Friday, when I have two performances. If you’re here in Utah, you have no excuse not to see one of these shows. They’re going to be great! So . . .
Tonight and Tomorrow (March 31 and April 1), BYU’s Contemporary Dance Theatre is putting on its “New Works New Voices” concert featuring choreography by Annie Garlick to my recent piano trio, “Gorre and Daphetid.” She’s created a powerful dance, “Reaching the Threshold,” that responds to the sadness of when one is helpless while loved ones suffer. The rest of the evening will be fabulous as well. Show starts at 7.30 pm at the BYU Richards Building Dance Studio Theatre. Tickets are $6; you can order them here. Also check out the article in the Daily Herald.
. . . But, as promised, there’s more!
Tomorrow and Tuesday (April 1 and April 5), Tara Hill and Mark Witmer will be premiering the first movement of my Clarinet Sonata. Tomorrow night’s performance is part of Tara’s senior recital. She’s assembled an exciting program that, in addition to my piece, features composers as far flung as Max Bruch, Elliott Carter, and Bela Kovacs. The concert starts at 9.30 pm in BYU’s Madsen Recital Hal, leaving you plenty of time to see “New Works New Voices” beforehand. Oh, and it’s free.
Finally, for those who will miss this weekend’s performances, as stated Tara Hill and Mark Witmer will be reprising their performance for the BYU Student Composers Recital on April 5. The concert starts at 7.30, is free, and will be followed by refreshments and witty banter.
I hope you all can make it to at least one of these concerts to see some really great music and dance!
