Along the same lines as what Prof. Alegant sent us in his last email… I’d like to concur that modern music is incredibly complex. When Levine gave us a presentation of his music… I began to grapple with another issue of modern music… the actual performance of it. Following the score and just trying to understand and follow the notation is very dificult… similarly it takes significant effort to understand the music as a listener. “But,” I thought, “to play it must be impossible!” I’m here at Oberlin to recieve a performance degree as a percussionist… and I can’t imagine how difficult it is to learn contemporary music. I don’t see how my journey as a performer will ever allow me to do such musically and technically difficult things. Basically, I’m insecure and don’t know if I can do it. However, I think I might be overanalyzing the situation. Levine described to me the polyrhythms that looks so complicated on the page as “written rubato” and in that sense… I feel they might be achievable. Further, I can imagine that with playing contemporary music… there are certain skills which you would hone and refine specific to that style of music. This happens in other styles too. For example playing 1 handed baroque trills on the marimba–if you don’t play lots of Baroque music… that particular skill is quite daunting. But, if all you do is play the Bach sonnata and partitas… you’ll foreseeably get quite good at one handed trills. Similaraly, if you play lots of contemporary music, the ability to decipher polyrhytms would become second nature. The strange alternate techniques would be quickly learned and mastered. You could learn to study the score efficiently, pulling out the important things–deciding what can and can’t be played. So, maybe my fear of playing contemporary music is nothing more than fear of the unknown… just like the fear I had of contemporary music before this class.
What does it mean for us to discuss the music we listen to? Sometimes, I feel like class discussion is productive and engaging. As I’ve blogged in the past, I value the varying opinions offered. But, at other times, I feel like people are somewhere in outerspace–hearing a totally different work than I’ve just experienced. And when class discussion is completely slanted with one viewpoint, it’s intimidating to break the norm. But what’s more important than our fears is that we can all approach a deeper understanding of the piece we’re analyzing. We will only acomplish this if we share our opinions and experiences. Bearing this in mind, I feel like some of our dicussion could be better spent analyzing the music, not the composer, the backstory, or any programatic meaning we wish to impose upon a work. While it is sometimes more challenging to really talk about the MUSIC…. we must endeavor to analyze the sounds, rhythms, timbres, formal aspects, and other musical structures in the works we listen to. We are a class of 20 intelligent, thoughtful, engaged individuals. Somebody should pipe up and get us on the right track when we’re astray. Last class period, I was afraid of voicing my opinion because it was completely contrary to the group’s feelings. I’m going to endeavor not to make the same mistake in the future–regardless of whether my opinion is right or wrong.
An interesting question: does our intellectual satisfaction with a piece of music relate to the emotive quality of the music? Music that can make us feel a certain way– is it always intelectually stimulating or challenging? Does a piece have to give us chill bumps to be “good?”
These questions were inspired by our listening to Lang this week. When I listen to him, I am rhythmically and intellectually intrigued, but I don’t feel significant emotive power in his work. Granted I am still new to his music, and I like what i have heard, but almost all of the music that I like conveys signigficant emotion. Lang doesn’t do that for me. So, is it possible to say this is good music? I think so… lots of music I listen to don’t give me chills. For example, I like Steely Dan. I love to listen to them just to groove out. Much of rock music funtions in this way: groove music. I think Lang has some similar aspects to music that is meant to be grooved to. Then again I could be missing the whole point as I don’t understand the philosophy behind his work. Whatever Lang is all about, I think we can safely say that his music is intriguing and fun to listen to– and even if there isn’t lots of emotional content, we can still have valuable listening experiences. Perhaps with further listening, we’ll be able to tap into the less cerbral side of this incredibly complicated music.
A conversation I’ve had recently has really captivated my thoughts of late. In talking to both Doug and Professor Alegant outside of class, the idea of “our own areas of expertise” has emerged. I’m sure we’ve all noticed how everyone in the class brings something a little different to the table. Each person has their own niche of knowledge, and contributes to our conversations so they can be well rounded and engaging. I really like this! So much sometimes, I even envy the people who have knowledge that I lack. For example, when Chris, Doug and David can talk so intelligently about the type of guitar the artist is using and how that relates to other artists who have used that type in the past, I wish I knew a ton about guitars! Or when Jessie and Andres explain how a vocoder or whatever it was works… I think it’s so cool they know about electronics. Or when Nick relates the visual impressions he has of the piece we listen to, and it so vividly resembles the work, I wish I could hear in pictures. What I’m learning to accept is that none of us will ever have a complete set of knowledge that will allow us to comprehensively understand everything we listen to. We can surely move forward and learn as much as possible, but at some point, we must decide exactly what it is we want to learn. There is simply too much music to have a deep knowledge of it all. Even in just one genre like Jazz, a person could never hope to “know” it. There are so many thousands of artists, and hundreds of thousands of recordings, we could never ever get our head around it. So if we can’t ever understand just one genre, how can we “get” all of music? That question is both daunting and invigorating at the same time. It is scary to think we will never reach our goal of complete musical fluency (there’s always more, Indian ragas for example…) but it’s also so exciting that we will never have a shortage of brand new music to discover and enjoy. And the more we listen to, the more we will enjoy it, and the more knowledge we will acquire. So, I resign myself to the fact that I don’t know it all–not anywhere close to it–and that the path to musical enlightenment will be for me, a lifelong road.
I like minimalism. I think its really great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great its great great great great great great great great great great great its great great great great great cool great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great awesome great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great interestinggreat great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great passionate great great great great great great great great great great great great engaging great great great great great great great great great its great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great its great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great greatits great great great great great great great great great great great.
But seriously, it is. I’d like to talk about a minimalist piece by Phillip Glass (Sorry professor!) on his album Glassworks. The piece Opening is for solo piano, and is written in a very tonal language. It is based on the polyrhythm 2:3, giving the piece a rhythmic groove that lasts the duration of the work. Variations occur in the harmonies, and most importantly in the phrasing by the pianist. Because the piece is so simple, the slightest differences in dynamics are immediately audible. If you let the music just wash over you, it is easy to not enjoy the piece. But if you really invest some time and listen to the subtleties of the performance, the music can have a dramatic effect. I feel like the general mood of the work is contemplative, or searching. I find it very difficult to write on this work, because there really isn’t much to say as a result of the limited material. I can’t wait for the class to listen to some Glass so we can discuss him. I wonder if he would say that his music doesn’t leave much to say…
Matt
So, I had a talk with my teacher today about triadic iteration lattices, and he gave me the score. He has it because his group recorded the CD we heard on Monday. I’d like to take a minute to relay some of the information. First, John Luther Adams is a different composer from the minimalist John Adams–usefull to know who wrote the piece. Second, this piece comes from a larger work entilted “Strange and Sacred Noise.” There are 6 mvts, for various types of percussion instruments. The movement we heard was orriginally concieved to be played on four Timpani Drums. However, I think we can agree the piece would be much less interesting performed on timpani. My teacher thought so too. He asked Adams to reconcieve the movement, and Adams decided on 4 air sirens. I will bring the score tomorrow so everyone can see it.
I’d like to take a moment to speak to the title of the work: “triadic iteration lattices.” Apart from its ostentatious diction, this title displays another entertaining aspect. It’s ironic. The adjective “triadic” specifically intones a work with definate pitch relationships–Major 3rds, Perfect 5ths; these intervals are necesary parts of any work described as “triadic.” But wait a second…. oh yeah….. IT’S FOR AIR SIREN PEOPLE!!!!!! THERE ARE NO TRIADS!!!!!!
I think this piece is a perfect example of how titles can be completely misleading as to the meaning and the content of a work. We should all be very wary of titles in the future.
-Matt
For this blog, I thought I’d take a slightly different approach than my previous analysis of Ligeti. I’d like to express some of my thoughts about the reactions that I have experienced and seen from others in our class. Now, we could go through this course just listening to music and writing about it. We’d probably learn lots about music! But if we don’t analyze the actual experience of listening we’ll miss out on skills and knowledge that will teach us how to be a good listener–possibly the most important ability this class can help us develop. I feel that our listening experiences fall into (broadly) three catagories: 1. “Yeah, I get it!”, 2. “Well… that was interesting.”, and 3.”Huh?”
(A quick note: some points made in this blog have clear counter-examples, i.e. when I say that “Huh?” experiences are often expressed by the word “mechanical,” you might say “but what about music that is supposed to sound mechanical?” I yeild to these types of examples. This blog is meant to adress our responses to music, and if the listener’s feelings about the piece mirror an aspect outlined below, he should at least consider that he is indeed having the applicable experience before deciding that the music was verily “mechanical” or “emotionless” or “unmoving.”)
Starting at the last category of experience, “Huh?” is when a piece goes in one ear, and straight out the other. The listener doesn’t understand, comprehend, or enjoy the music he has just heard. There are many possible reasons for this type of reaction. First: we don’t have the musical context necessary to appreciate the work. This can be plainly seen in the history of listening–as new music is written, audiences are at first unsettled by it, then applaud it. This often occurs because the listener is unused to the harmonic language, the formal structure, the rhythmic content, or some other musical element. This foreign entity proves so distracting to them that they have no sense of familiarity with the piece, and they lose all sense of connection to the musicians and composer. This can be expressed in various ways–I’ve used words like “mechanical,” “emotionless,” “robotic,” even “ugly” to describe these performances. Later, when I glean more musical knowledge from some source, I often come back to these pieces and LOVE them! For example, I used to hate opera. Then I learned about singing. When I came back, I LOVED opera! A second cause for “Huh?” experiences: we aren’t emotionally available. Often, we listen to a piece with a preconcieved opinion, and shut the door by which the artist enters and toys with our psyche. Such an opinion could be: “Oh, this music won’t express any emotion” or “I won’t like this music.” If a listener starts with this mindset, or develops it early in his listening experience, it is unlikely he will enjoy or understand the musical ideas the artist is trying to communicate. A final cause for “Huh?” experiences: being tired. I personally struggled with this on Wednesday. I was tired. You can’t expect to have great listening experiences if you are falling asleep. Without sharpness of mind and ear, you will miss important musical elements that make for an enjoyable listen, resulting in a negative opinion of the work. While “Huh?” experiences seem bad, they are much less frustrating than the second type of experience: “Well that was interesting…”
In general, this experience occurs when one or more of the three elements above (lack of musical context, emotional unavailability, fatigue) are at play, but in a less severe degree. When a listener can understand most of the musical ideas, but are a little tired so they miss small parts, I find their reactions to have some critical missed information, i.e. “I thought the harmonic progression was interesting, but the melody was lifeless.” While this is possible, with the great works of music we’ll (hopefully) be studying this is an unlikely explanation. More likely is that the listener has not fully engaged with the music so as to allow the artist to reach him through the melody. These types of experiences are often the most annoying as we know that there is something in the music, but we don’t quite have access to it. If we can overcome this obstacle, the last type of experience is in reach.
The “Yeah… I get it!” response is the most gratifying by far. It often is accompanied by visual images, physical responses, and deep emotional sensations. I’ve noticed that this is the reaction experienced by most people in our class on a regular basis. We all notice different things. But, we have really engaged as listeners and have allowed ourselves to be transported to another realm by the piece.
So, how do we go about going from “Huh?” experiences to “Yeah… I get it!”? First, study the music–give it a chance. Learn about synthesizers, aleatoric devices, and picardi thirds. Second, don’t judge! Let the music envelope you and be open to its message. Third, sleep! (just for levity: I’m writing this blog at 4am) If we all consciously work on these elements, we’ll be on our way to becoming better listeners.
Ok. I’m going to sleep now…
After I do chemistry…
-Matt M
So, tonight I made my first listening forays into Ligeti. To sum it up in a phrase: Ligeti transports me to other worlds. This music is clearly a counter-example to the argument that avantgarde music can’t or doesn’t create a range of emotional responses. I feel extremely uneducated in respect to the majority of the compositional devices used by Ligeti in both Atmospheres and Lontano, however I experienced whole universes in the music. I clearly felt sadness, regret, joy, angst, and any number of other vivid emotions. You know how you sometimes get goosebumps on your arms when the music is amazing? That happened on my whole body! Contrary to the opinion of many, and my own former views… this is great music.
-Matt M
(Another more extended blog on one of the pieces will follow tomorrow)
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