[English, with ammunition-talk, follows]

Le 27 janvier, Jennifer Lang et Il-Woong Seo vont donner la création française de Something Else (Music for Sleeping through Winter) au Conservatoire de La Courneuve (41 avenue Gabriel Péri,93120 La Courneuve, RER B à La Courneuve-Aubervilliers, puis regardez le plan). Pour l’instant le concert est prévu pour 19h30, mais nous n’avons pas encore fixé l’heure. Donc revenez ici pour confirmer avant la date ! Entrée libre.

J’espère que vous tous pouvez venir !

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On January 27, Jennifer Lang and Il-Woong Seo are going to give the French premiere of Something Else (Music for Sleeping through Winter) at the Conservatoire de La Courneuve (41 avenue Gabriel Péri,93120 La Courneuve, RER B to La Courneuve-Aubervilliers, then look at the map). We haven’t nailed down the start time yet, it’ll probably be either 7:30pm or 8pm. Check back before the date to confirm. Free admission.

I hope y’all can make it!

In the mean time, remember that story about the BBs and tasers? Well, this is the story of how the BBs became piano mutes.

In the end I ordered them online. It was pretty exciting when they showed up so I tore the box open!

There’s the bag they came in. Our kitchen scale only goes to 10 kilos, so we got an error message.

Sarah opened the bag:
and this is what was inside:

Close-up!

I’m going to take a moment here to mention that I did not invent these sock mutes. That distinction goes to a much greater composer than myself, Stephen Hartke. They produce a sound that’s similar to an upright piano’s mute - a sound I’d been thinking about how to reproduce for years before I heard these things in action at MusicX during the summer of 2010.

Also, while giving credit where it is due, see Jennifer Jolley’s take on the same process from about a year ago…

So anyway, now the real fun began. You have to fill the socks with 4 pounds of BBs each (~1.83 kg), and then sew the socks shut. This was the basic set-up for filling the socks:

Part-way full:

One full sock mute!

After all six mutes were full
it was time to sew them shut. Magically, just a few days before, a sewing machine showed up in our house, making this process much easier. Sarah showed me how to use it:

And I somehow managed to only break the machine a few times while sewing the rest of the socks shut:

I ain’t sayin’ the stitching’s any good:s

But it’ll do the job.

Sometimes, you have to do strange things for art.

I just returned from a trip to three different armureries (gun stores). Because I need to prepare for a second performance of Something Else (Music for Sleeping through Winter) at some time on January 27, somewhere in the wilds of Seine-St-Denis. (Maybe I’ll learn more of that crucial information tomorrow, or maybe I won’t…) I do not need a gun just to enter the Neuf-Cube, as, frankly, the place doesn’t hold a candle to Washington Heights, where I managed to live for many years without the aid of a firearm. Rather, as some of you may remember, Something Else requires BB-filled socks to be placed inside the piano to mute the strings. In other words, I needed not a gun, but ammo.

For the premiere last February, in New York City, I borrowed mutes from Jennifer Jolley, who had already made her own, adorably-cute set. That still involved shipping 20 pounds of BBs from Cincinnati to New York, but that seemed more logical at the time than bringing an extra 20 pounds of BBs into the world. However, shipping all those small metal balls BBs across the Atlantic seems pretty absurd. So this time I needed to buy a lot of BBs here in France and sew them into children’s socks myself.

The story I want to tell, though, is not especially music-related. Like I said, sometimes we must do peculiar things for art. I am not someone especially comfortable around guns. I do not like them. They are dangerous and scary. Places that sell them are even more so, plus gun stores have always felt to me a bit like a porn shop - morally forbidden - except that they contain things whose purpose is to kill people, rather than pictures of naked people. So it took quite some effort to get up the nerve to walk into a gun store. Finally, this afternoon, I picked up, got on a velib’, and biked down to Gare du Nord to visit a couple of gun shops in the neighborhood. When I walked in, there were two customers and just one salesman, so I had to wait nervously in line. (First, more time in a gun store means more time near guns means more opportunity for something terrible to happen with said guns - especially considering that this gun shop was not locked. Second, I need BBs to put into socks. To, um, mute a piano with. If called upon to explain myself, i.e., why should I be looking for 11 kilos of BBs when usually people by them in bottles of 500 grams, what exactly am I going to say? At what point will “c’est un projet artistique” give way to utter incredulity? And then suspicion? I am a foreigner, after all, not to be trusted - and an American, at that, and everyone knows what Americans are like with guns. How long until the cops haul me out of the shop in manacles because, seriously, what kind of idiot would want to put anything - much less metal balls - in a piano to change the sound???)

It rapidly became clear, though, that the man behind the counter was helping a mild-mannered older woman — with her scissors. There was something wrong with the screw in her scissors, and she had seen it fit to walk into a gun shop in order to get them fixed. This comforted me. It made me feel more secure - it seemed that I wasn’t really in a place that proffered means of death and destruction, but in fact a pleasant corner store where one could, without batting an eye, go to get one’s household items repaired by a friendly neighborhood shopkeeper. I stopped vaguely hyperventilating. I began to feel at home. Being in a gun store wasn’t so scary after all.

The friendly shopkeeper, having resolved the nice older lady’s concern - he even demonstrated to her how well her scissors now worked, and refused to charge her for his services - moved on to the other customer, in the back right corner of the store. Lulled into a sense of security, believing that in fact, gun stores are comfortable happy-fests, I neglected to watch what was happening over there. I started exploring the area to my left, behind the counter, where I had located a stock of ammunition, which isn’t even really as scary as knives in isolation, and, I thought, probably the BBs I was looking for were over there. Maybe I could get a leg up on the shopkeeper by already knowing where what I wanted was. (I was even inspired to alliteration!)

As I was looking over to the side, I heard - and smelled - BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-

The tell-tale zap of a taser. The next customer wanted to buy a taser. Why? And why did it have to smell so narschty? And he wanted to see another one?! My disillusion was magnified by the sense of well-being that preceded it.

[Shiver] Gun stores really are bad places!

Last week, the Times ran an installment of their “The Score” blog by Pat Muchmore about graphic notation, and more generally, about any non-standard notation. It’s a shame that it had to take its point of departure from the extremist rantings of a graphic-notation hater (we do always make it worse by shouting a lot), but once he got going, Muchmore did a wonderful job of describing how hard it can sometimes be to get onto paper what it is that you really want the interpreters of your music to play. The problem, the challenge, with a graphic score -but really any score- is making the appearance actually add something to the interpretation. I don’t write graphic scores, but I do use non-standard notation, generally in order to convey to the performers the sense of a freedom of choice in the immediate gesture that doesn’t get in the way of the architecture of the piece. Sometimes it works, like in Rising, the Trio, and my winter music - but sometimes it doesn’t.

I’ve just posted the video of the premiere of What Nobody Expected, my paean to Monty Python for tenor sax and electronics. Here it is:

It is, sadly, an example of when the notation and the goal don’t line up. I like the piece a lot, and in the end, I think it survives my crass mistake. But I suspect that I’ve done it wrong by leaving it largely rhythmless. (more…)

[en français en bas]

They asked me for “sacred” theme music. They got something sort of Gregorian. (I don’t claim to have written a note for this, I have only appropriated. I like being a music consultant!)

And I quote:

We are going to play our show about water, Ubla Dubla Trubla, next Tuesday 22nd March, at the Jardin Catherine-Labouré, in the 7th arrondissement as part of the Journée Mondiale de l’Eau. Come along if you fancy some silliness on the grass, directed by the lovely Susana Alcantud.

At 2pm, 3:30, and 5pm.

(by the way they really are clowns, and it really is a fun show!)

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Ils m’ont demandé un “générique” “sacré”, ils ont reçu un truc en style grégorien … (Je ne dis pas que j’ai rien écrit pour ce spectacle, je ne faisais qu’approprier des choses. J’aime être consultant de musique !)

Je cite :

Nous allons jouer notre spectacle sur le thème de l’eau, Ubla Dubla Trubla, le mardi 22 mars, au Jardin Catherine-Labouré, dans le 7eme arrondissement lors de la Journée Mondiale de l’Eau. Venez si vous avez envie d’assister à des choses bêtes (et belles!) sur la pelouse, mise en scène par la formidable Susana Alcantud.

A 14h, 15h30, et 17h

(au fait qu’il sont des vrais clowns, et que c’est un spectacle vraiment amusant ! )

Thus spake the Cross-Linx Festival’s home page a few weeks ago upon the official addition of Ben’s solo trombone set to their festival. I’m still not entirely clear what cross-linx is or what’s going on up there, but I do know that it’s a traveling 4-day extravaganza of rock music and contemporary classical, whatever that means. I do know that Ben will be premiering, four times over, a piece I wrote for him called Redirect, as well as a new piece by Phil Schuessler. He’ll also play Berio’s kick-ass Sequenza V.

Cross-Linx has also finally released its schedule for all four dates. We already knew that The National was headlining (Ben plays trombone for them), but now we discover that they will be competing directly with Missy Mazzoli’s new music rock band, Victoire. It’s kind of asstastic that you have to chose between those two.

This being a self-serving forum, I will direct you towards my work. In Utrecht on the 17th, Ben is playing from 7:45-8:15, “outdoors”. In Eindhoven on the 18th, he will be in the “backstage area” of the Muziekgebouw from 9:30-10. On the 19th in Groningen, he’ll be at De Kelder backstage from 9-9:30 and 9:45-10:15. And on the 20th in Rotterdam, he’ll be on from 9:15-9:45, backstage.

Redirect is so named for a couple of reasons. Most simply, because the material was supposed to be used for a violin-and-piano duo that I hope to return to some day, but when I ran out of time, I wrote Comments (0)

The daring duo of violinist Esther Noh and pianist Jacob Rhodebeck are going to premiere my brand-spanking-new violin-and-piano duo that’s called Something Else (Music for Sleeping through Winter) on February 8 - that’s in two weeks! As they say, “the composer will be in attendance.” He will be in attendance at: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, at 619 Lexington Avenue (@54th Street), at 8pm. $10 donation requested.

The concert will also include Prisma by the fantastic Felipe Lara, Michael Finnissy’s Mississippi Hornpipes, and John Adams’s Road Movies.

Something Else (Music for Sleeping through Winter) is cold and crystalline, as befits winter music, and requires some strange mutes for the piano made by filling socks with BBs. It’s also one of my most abstract scores yet, notationally: each staff is worth about one minute, and it’ll be up to Esther and Jacob to work out how to divide the time up.

Can I make this short? I hope so.

I’m amused by Anthony Tommasini’s effort to make a top-ten greatest composers ever list, which culminated yesterday. I mean, why not? I can’t even dispute too many of his decisions, not even the one to leave out the living composers. Though it is somewhat arbitrary that Elliott be excluded from consideration while Ligeti, born 15 years later but apparently of lesser physical constitution, not be. Anyway, sideways talk like that isn’t going to help with brevity.*

In that culminating article, Tommasini quotes a reader quoting Alex Ross:

In [an] essay [in Ross’s book, Listen to This,] he argues that the very term “classical music” makes this vibrant art form seem dead. Indeed, as he writes, “greatness” and “seriousness” are not classical music’s defining characteristics; it can also “be stupid, vulgar and insane.”

I haven’t read the original Ross, so I can’t speak to the proper context, but, as it’s used here, I’ve said it before, and I said it again, No! Greatness is not in addition to stupidity, vulgarity, and insanity. Artistic greatness is stupidity, vulgarity, and insanity. It’s the ability to push beyond the boundaries of form and structure into something weird and messy and thus more real.

That is all. Perhaps I have been sufficiently brief?

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*But it did let me tag Ligeti in the categories. Hah!

I’m going to try to make this quick.

A few weeks ago I concluded my post by writing:

I hope we can banish this thought that systematic composition, or systematic art of any sort, is of inherent value. I certainly wish it hadn’t shown up, expressed with such ugly certainty, in such a well-read source as The Gray Lady…

Upon further reflection, it’s pretty clear to me that what I really need to do is to explain why I think it matters how we write about music. My less phlegmatic better-half pointed out that I write most of my blogs picking apart what other people say. And also that Lubow, who was almost certainly just parroting something that someone, maybe even Pärt himself, told him, doesn’t really deserve the abuse. It’s true. Lubow doesn’t appear to be a musician particularly - his other articles run the gamut of the arts - and journalists inherently write about subjects that they are not specifically trained in. Their profession is about the distillation of diverse information, not about gathering comprehensive professional knowledge of every subject they write about. I can’t and don’t expect Arthur Lubow to be able to judge the validity of his paragraph about systematic composition - he doesn’t even really define “systematic” beyond affiliating the word with Schoenberg. It actually takes something beyond common knowledge to know why he would make that affiliation or what that means. And it takes professional knowledge to be able to question the affiliation - and even so, I am taking a position that is nowhere near universally held amongst professional musicians, or even amongst professional composers.

So why does it matter? Well it got worse yesterday!

The Times ran an article about Anne-Sophie Mutter entitled As Complex as the Music She Plays. Gah!!!!

Apparently the Times has developed an editorial policy by which any article written about classical music, contemporary or not, must include a reference to how difficult and complicated the music is. This is what makes me mad, and sad. I wish that this music wasn’t so associated with impossibility. Some new stuff sure is difficult, yes, I won’t try to deny that, but it frustrates me when I talk to friends and acquaintances about, say, Beethoven, and the response is, oh I really don’t get that, it’s too complicated! Yes, there’s jargon like in any field, but to have a visceral reaction to the music? It just requires paying attention, and some patience.

I’m immensely appreciative that the Times Magazine decided to do a story on Arvo Pärt. (I’m also very very happy they wrote a profile of Anne-Sophie Mutter and her predilection for Wolfgang Rihm, among others. I’m also sad that “holy minimalist” Gorecki has passed away.) It means that there are a few figures in contemporary music who the Times thinks can command a general, albeit mostly over-educated, audience. But I worry about how my art form is portrayed, and constantly portraying the music as “complex,” “systematic,” rigorous” - all of which say cold and difficult - doesn’t really help expand the audience.

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Remember I wrote a few months ago about performing John Cage’s Roaratorio outside? I want to write more about the dearth of music as public art. I think there’s a connection here that I want to explore some more. Let’s start with,

RESOLVED: IRCAM should have outdoor concerts during the Fete de la Musique.

(They have, in fact, consistently avoided programming on June 21 for as far back as their online documentation of the Agora Festival goes.)

More later. In the meantime, discuss.

apropos of nothing, and Arvo Pärty

(via Brenda)

I’m working on another post about what precisely upset me about the Pärt article beyond a piddly little semantic dispute, but while I was composing today, I realized that I was making the same mistake I’ve been counseling against. And that seems like it’s worth writing about - and actual tale from the creative process!

I’m writing a piece for violin and piano that will be premiered in NYC by Esther Noh and Jacob Rhodebeck in February. I’ve gotta get moving on this piece, since they want it by around Thanksgiving! So I’ve sort of gone into tunnel-vision mode. I’ve conceived of the piece as a theme and variations, except that after a certain point the variations in the piano start going at a different rate than those in the violin. Then at the climax, everything gets back together.

So far I’ve been treating the theme more serially than anything else, that is to say that I’m using the notes of the series and the intervals those notes generate as fodder to transform the theme in interesting ways, rather than, say, rewriting the melody over repetitive harmonic material, like Mozart would have done. This is nothing new, for example, Copland, who you don’t think of as a serialist, did it to great effect in his Piano Variations of 1930, and despite the appearance of automatism, you generally find all sorts of interesting things by working through the material in this way. What shouldn’t be automatic/systemic is the decision of what to use and where.

I’ve been working on the variations-at-different-rates section, and I’ve been treating my theme serially, and each variation in its respective instrument works pretty well. (more…)