Sunday Morning Schoenberg (& Adorno)

This morning, with my coffee:

Arnold Schoenberg: Ewartung, Op.17 (Sony SMK 48 466 CD)
Janis Martin, soprano; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond.
Arnold Schoenberg: Die Gluckliche Hand, Op.18 (Sony SMK 48 464 CD)
Siegmund Nimsgern, bass; BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond.
Arnold Schoenberg: Das Buch Der Hangenden Garten, Op.15 (Black Box BBM1072 CD)
Sarah Connolly, soprano; Iain Burnside, piano
Arnold Schoenberg: Concerto for Piano, Op.42; Drei Klavierstucke, Op.11; Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke, Op.19 (Philips 289 468 033-2 CD)
Mitsuko Uchida, piano; The Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond.

While reading:

Theodore W. Adorno: The Philosophy of New Music (1949) (University of Minnesota). A new translation (2006) and forward by Robert Hullot-Kentor.

See, I really do like this stuff...

--rgc

Tickets? We got Tickets!

I’m ashamed to admit it, but while we’ve lived in the Nashville area for almost ten years now, we’ve never once been to a performance at the legendary Ryman Auditorium - “The Mother Church” of country music, the original home of “The Grand Ol’ Opry,” a certified National Landmark. Well, Liz managed to score tickets to see Lucinda Williams on March 30. We are huge Lucinda Williams fans and we’re excited to pick up her new album, West, which comes out on Tuesday. We’ve passed up numerous opportunities to see her live, but we’re finally going to hear her in the intimate and historical environs of the Ryman. Literally a former church, the Ryman holds barely over 2,000 people and, needless to say, this concert will be special. We are definitely looking forward to this.

Nashville also has a brand-spanking-new symphony hall, The Schermerhorn Center, which is, from first-hand accounts, an acoustical marvel on the level of the finest European concert halls. Built largely with private funds (there are no public funds for the arts in Tennessee!), seating capacity was sacrificed for the benefit of the best possible sound quality and I’ve been anxious to check it out. Unfortunately, the programming for the opening season is, shall we say, very conservative. With the death of Kenneth Schermerhorn in 2005, the Nashville Symphony has lacked a full-time conductor and musical director, so the opening season features a series of guest-conductors leading blandly familiar repertoire. However, to give credit to where credit is due, every concert of this season will feature a (short) composition by a living composer, a welcome (if perfunctory) gesture. And Alasdair Neal will be conducting Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra on May 17-19, and we’ll be there on Friday the 18th, in fabulous seats : Front row center of the balcony. The Nashville Symphony Orchestra is a capable group of musicians – recent performances of Elliott Carter’s Piano Concerto and Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony with pianist Mark Wait were fresh and invigorating. One quibble: I wish that Bartok’s modern masterpiece was not paired with Joseph Haydn's Symphony No.103 ("Drum Roll"). Why not Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste, to give a fuller picture of Bartok’s soundworld and give the audience a little challenge? Well, I know why not. (*Sigh*). In any event, I will take my modernism where I can find it and will very much enjoy hearing it in a superb acoustical environment.

We also have plane tickets for a trip to New York City in April. It has been several years since we were last in “The City” and we are totally excited to return. I am really looking forward to going to the recently enlarged Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), hearing some music, and hopefully seeing some old friends.

Lots of stuff to look forward to in the coming months!

--rgc

Why music?

One of the things that makes writing about music so difficult for me is that I genuinely do not understand why people listen to music. Or rather, I do not understand what people (who are not musicians) hear when they listen to music.

In a way, being a trained musician forever wrecked my perception of music as music. It’s like knowing how the magician’s tricks are done. I can appreciate the artistry and virtuosity of the act, but I cannot ever again be fooled by the illusion. I can never again experience music as simply a listener.

That is one of the reasons why I have always been drawn to extreme forms of music – atonality, free-jazz, punk-rock, noise – music where the boundaries of “common practice” are radically extended (or overthrown), where the "tricks" are not so easy to detect and that vertiginous rush of unfamiliarity can still be felt.

My appreciation of music is inextricably tied up with my knowledge of how it’s put together, while at the same time, I know all too well that a description of music’s constituent parts is not a description of the whole. Such a description is not the thing itself - just as the score is not the thing itself - and it seems to me that the closer you focus on music’s construction, the further you get from its essence. For example, to say that the chord sequence I7-IV7-V7 explains how the “blues trick” is done is not even remotely useful in explaining how the blues touches your soul. It tells the aspiring musician a little bit about how to go about playing the music, but it doesn’t even begin to explain why he or she might want to do so. To say that Schoenberg used all twelve notes of the octave explains the modernist “trick” also obscures the music's beauty and expression.

For the non-musician, all of this verbiage is just useless jargon and for the musician whose understanding is limited to the notes on a page, the music will be badly played and poorly understood. And what does the non-musician get out of any of this? And what can be said about any of this that doesn’t sound reductionist and stupid?

What is it that people want out of music? Why is it so important – so necessary - yet so hard to talk about? Its ineffable quality is no doubt a big part of its attraction to the human spirit since music is pure abstraction - nothing but the movement of air in the passage of time. There is something about music that is pre-verbal, innate.

Then another thing that makes writing about music difficult for me is that the act of writing is not pleasurable for me. I struggle with every word, every phrase, every sentence. Everything I write seems utterly banal once it’s there on the page (or screen): Nothing but a labored exposition on the obvious and unremarkable. And, if you hadn’t noticed by now, I have a tendency to kind of, um, overstate things, which probably undermines whatever point it is I think I'm trying to make.

Why am I doing this? Why do I care so much about music that I actually want to write about it? And why would anyone care about music enough to read what I have to write about it? It’s a mystery to me.

--rgc

Is Music Art? (Part Three)

Sam made a comment on Part Two:

"I think you’d have been hard pressed in 1967 to find someone to admit they
didn’t think Sgt Pepper was a work of art. Even in 2007, I think a lot
of people would say that that album is art."

This brings up another aspect of the “problem” I’ve set up for myself. My last post intentionally focused on so-called “classical/art music” and its discontents, how its self-proclaimed artistic value has been undermined by its parochial narrow-mindedness and how a shameful cowardice towards its own historical trajectory has resulted in the culling the repertoire down to a handful of moldy “masterpieces” devoid of context and meaning. Or something like that.

On the other hand, “Pop music” is arguably the only music that has any really meaningful relationship to its audience, where aesthetic risks are taken and applauded, and where modernist techniques have found a welcoming environment. Understand that I mean “pop music” in the broadest sense possible: that is, everything else that is not “classical/art music,” from the The Beatles to Anthony Braxton. So, the problem (the dialectic as it were) is that the music that proudly proclaims itself to be art is often actually not art, and music that is fundamentally commercial “pop music” is actually (sometimes) genuine, authentic, and powerful art. Further, so-called “classical/art music” has itself devolved into “pop music” in the most perjorative and cynical sense in that “saleability” is the paramount justification for its programming and for the deliberate exclusion of modernism from the repertoire. Classical music desperately wants to be liked, to sell tickets and records and not offend any potential customers. It’s as conservative and risk-averse an industry as any blue-chip corporation. Yet so-called “classical music” realm holds itself out as the purveyor and ultimate arbiter of what is and is not art-music and certifiable high culture and sets the standards by which all of the musical arts are to be measured. It’s not only phony and hypocritical (and that would be OK if it was only just show-biz), but, because of its hegemonic aesthetic weight, it’s also deeply destructive to our cultural psyche in that it serves an oppressive, regressive, and authoritarian ideology. The mindless worship of Beethoven – stripped of his original context of Enlightenment ideals – is ahistorical, anti-intellectual, and the handmaiden of fascism.

Therefore, under the prevailing ideology, “pop music" is – and can only be – incidentally (or accidentally) art. “Pop music” is primarily a commercial enterprise and always only secondarily about creativity and artistic expression. This causes all kinds of aesthetic problems. Let’s take the example of Anthony Braxton. In my estimation, Braxton is one of the world’s greatest and most important living composers and his music is of the highest artistic importance. But, from the perspective of the “classical/art music” world, his music, rooted as it is in the African-American vernacular and “jazz,” can therefore always and only be considered “pop music," and thus not worthy of serious attention. (Not to mention that Braxton’s music is modernist, dissonant, weird, and unmarketable). Thus, he has been eternally marginalized to toil in the “jazz” trenches. It matters little what I and a few others might think, or that he’s won a McArthur Grant, or is a full blown academic at Wesleyan University; Braxton’s position in the culture does not correspond with the High Culture approbation one should expect of such an extraordinary artistic achievement. The truth is, Braxton is virtually invisible to the culture at large. But, make no mistake, just because his music is not particularly popular has nothing to do with the fact that it’s still considered “pop” music." This exclusion is not some sort of accident - it is deliberate and ideological.

And this ideology is dangerous not just because it is racist. I use Braxton as an example because he, more than anyone else I can think of, has demonstrated not only a mastery of the “jazz” idiom that binds him so inextricably to the “pop” realm, but has also demonstrated a mastery of fully notated, complex composition, every bit as “serious” as any “classical” composer. Yet his music will always only be found in the “jazz” bins no matter how un-jazzlike it is. His notated music should be recorded by Deutsche Grammophone and performed at Symphony Hall before large and grateful audiences, but it is, alas, merely “pop” music that is only also incidentally art.

And then there’s The Beatles, the accidental artists.

The Beatles are the ultimate example of truly popular “pop” music that is only also accidentally (sometimes) “art.” The Beatles are the epitome of pop music: everybody loves The Beatles. Sgt Pepper is the one rock record that the musicians, the audience, the musicologists, and Leonard Bernstein could all agree upon as being a modern masterpiece – a certified, full-blown “work of art.” But maybe not so much all those other records - particularly those vulgar early records or the painful and angst-ridden later stuff. No, only Sgt Pepper satisfies all the requirements of the sacred denotation “art.” But, truly it was only an accident, never to be repeated. Look at how Paul McCartney supplicates himself to the “classical/art music” world with his Oratorios. (See also recent “classical” gambits by Elvis Costello, Sting, and Billy Joel). None of it will make any difference to the culture at large and these gambits must always fail, regardless of their musical merits. This ideology not only overstates Sgt Pepper’s ultimate artistic worth, it also serves to further the phony divide between so-called “classical/art music” and everything else that is merely “pop.”

Sam goes on to say:

"Works of art are where you find them..."

Indeed. Finding them is the problem.

I know full well that I am engaging in a muddle-headed polemic here that likely comes across as little more than warmed over Adorno. The Culture Industry voraciously appropriates everything in its path and sells it back to us as meaningless consumer products and in the process of commodification effectively neutralizes whatever artistic power the works themselves may have once hoped to embody. Yes, but now what? Does it matter? Shall we just sit back and enjoy the showbiz entertainment spectacle and be grateful for the tidbits of genuinely affective and powerful art that can be found, from time to time, therein? Or is this cultural status quo a poisonous vehicle for regression, anti-intellectualism, and an authoritarian ideology that seeks to undo every one of beloved Beethoven’s Enlightenment ideals? And if we admit that our musical-artistic culture enshrines an imperialistic, if not outright fascist ideal, then shouldn’t we care enough to examine how this came to be and perhaps seek to restore to music its position as the ultimate humanistic, liberal, art?

Here’s what I believe (and I know it sounds ridiculous): If the world had listened to Schoenberg (rather than Stravinsky), the Second World War could have been avoided. It is no joke that Schoenberg had to flee his homeland with the rise of Hitler; his music being so quickly labeled as “degenerate” by the new regime is a clue to its artistic and sociological importance, and its power. I am, of course, overstating things, but imagine a society that embraced dissonance – that society would value diversity, pluralism, non-hierarchical organizational structures, would strive for a composed freedom. A musical culture that embraces “tradition,” “likeability,” and “functional harmony” more than anything else fosters narrow-mindedness, divisiveness, elitism, and right-wing politics. (How’s that for an unsupported and deliberately controversial assertion!)

Like I said, I know I’m being ridiculous.

So let’s put it another way. Lizzy gave me a subscription to Art In America for my birthday, and as I look through it each month, I wonder, why isn’t there a Music In America that intelligently discusses music as art, in its full historical context for an audience that cares about it? The finest music periodicals are to be found in Britain: The Grammophone, The Wire, and Mojo are well written publications, but it’s not the same. The focus is on saleability, the personalities more than the work itself, and always pushing product, no matter how outré it might occasionally be. I really admire Waxpoetics for its seriousness and high production values, but its focus is on hiphop/beat digger culture which is fascinating, but too much of a niche publication to have the cultural clout of, say, ArtForum. Where is the ArtForum for music? Is music not an art form?

I think so, but I feel that I am decidedly in the minority.

Is Music Art? (Part Two)

“Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That
just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality? Do we
have anything like – Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegans
Wake? I wonder.”

(Morton Feldman, "Toronto Lecture, April 1982," Morton Feldman Says :
Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987, London: Hyphen, 2006,
p.136).

Feldman’s question begs the answer, “of course music is an art form and here are some examples of some far-out, ‘important’ stuff that proves it.” But, this question of music as an art form points to some of the difficulties that so-called “serious” or “classical” music confronts in the marketplace of ideas. Feldman suggests that it’s all just show-biz.

First of all, let’s be honest and admit that most people simply do not care about music very much to begin with. Pop music is consumed as sonic wall-paper and/or as a social-identity tool. In any event, music is merely a consumer product, only incidentally (or accidentally) a work of art. The same is true on a more (ahem) refined level for the “classical” music consumer for whom a more “adult,” upscale, and high-class social-identity tool is desired. The music itself is show-biz all the way, with only rare outbursts of discomfiting “art” that only serves to irritate those patrons who desire only predictable familiarity and certified “masterpieces.”

Aside from the vanishingly small subcultures of scholars and musicians, for most people, music is decidedly not an art form. Or maybe it is - who cares? They simply do not want to listen to it. What’s worse is that for musicians themselves music is not an art form – at least not as defined by John Cage (or any of those other modernist, difficult, composers).

Why should this be so? Most people, even if they don’t like (or “understand”) abstract painting, will at least grudgingly admit that it is, in fact, “art.” Even if most people won’t ever actually read Finnegans Wake, they would accept its designation as a work of art. Not so much with music. “Art Music” as presented by your local symphony orchestra is a miniscule repertoire of 19th Century war-horses trotted out again and again for the benefit of the local gentry who would emphatically insist that John Cage is not music and it most assuredly is not art. (More than likely, most members of the orchestra would heartily agree!)

The problem is complex and the first essential difficulty is that music exists only in time - sometimes vast expanses of time. A person can look at a painting for a fraction of a second and assess it as a whole. Then, maybe choose to look some more or maybe look at something else. Music, on the other hand insists that you submit to its demand for your time. It also demands concentration to appreciate how the sounds relate to each other over that span of time. And, unlike a work of literature, you cannot pick it up and put down at convenient intervals without destroying its essence as a time-based medium. So, this is difficult for people.

Furthermore, music is difficult to talk about. Literature, obviously, is itself words and there is an enormous vocabulary of words with which to talk about visual phenomena. It is easy to talk about what we see. But music is, at its very essence, utterly abstract and what descriptive vocabulary we do have for sound is limited and woefully inexact. Of course, one may learn how to read and write musical notation, maybe even learn how to play musical instruments, but all of that is of little use when trying to articulate what makes some groupings of sounds music.

Music is obviously hard-wired into the human brain. Everyone sings in the shower although not everyone writes (or even reads) or paints or draws. This “natural” tendency towards music is of course one of the things that makes music so unique in the arts. But this “fact of nature” also tends to make everyone an “expert” and allows a very subjective and personal taste to define what is good and bad, art and not-art. Therefore, most people are simply never going to be convinced to listen to John Cage or Arnold Schoenberg (or Morton Feldman) and call it “art.” They can’t stand to listen to it for a single second. No one sings “Pierrot Lunaire” in the shower.

Of course, it really is all Arnold Schoenberg’s fault. So-called “classical” music was at the height of its post-Romantic popularity when he kicked over the table with his “free atonality” and 12-tone rows. His “emancipation of the dissonance” effectively ended the meaningful relationship of “Art Music” to the culture at large and the “standard repertoire” would therefore end with Richard Wagner (with a little Debussy or maybe sometimes Bartok thrown in for spice). So, it was definitely all over long ago by the time Cage (incidentally a student of Schoenberg) wrote music out of silence.

As my friend, the composer/professor Stan Link likes to say, “music went one way and the audience went another.”

Welcome to the Post-Modern.

Now Playing: Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman (1926-1987): Patterns in a Chromatic Field (Tzadik, 2005)

Charles Curtis: ‘cello
Aleck Karis: piano

Even though I prided myself on my radically open-minded taste in music, I didn’t like Morton Feldman’s music at all when I first heard it - and that shocked me. I knew he was “important” since he was not only a close friend and colleague of John Cage (whose music I had no problem with), but also friends with the major Abstract Expressionist artists like Willem DeKooning, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, and Robert Rauschenberg (all of whose art I loved). Clearly there was something wrong with me, to be so befuddled by this apparently simple – if seemingly simple-minded – music. Rather than rejecting it out-of-hand, I viewed this music as a challenge to my unexamined prejudices about what music is supposed to be and decided to investigate further.

Feldman made a name for himself in the 1950s with his “graphic notation” wherein sounds are divided into three categories (high, medium, and low) and a number in each category refers to the number of musical “events” that are to take place, with each column on the graph representing a certain span of time (i.e. each column = MM=60). The actual pitches and rhythms are left up to the performer. John Cage would continue to develop this kind of “indeterminancy” for the rest of his career, while Feldman gradually returned to a conventional, if idiosyncratic, notation full of double-flats and double-sharps, constantly changing odd meters (i.e. 5/2, 13/8, etc.), and meticulously subdivided rhythms.

Feldman’s mature music is small-m minimalist music. Using the least amount of musical material (a few notes, a broken rhythm), Feldman aspires to create music with the Greenbergian “flatness of surface” akin to the paintings of his artist friends, the Abstract Expressionists. The dynamic markings are generally “as slowly and as softly as possible.” But, unlike the Big-M Minimalists like Philip Glass, Terry Riley, or Steve Reich, this is decidedly not easy listening. I mean no disrespect to these composers, but Feldman’s music is deeply rooted in the harmonic language of the Second Viennese School (particularly Anton Webern) and is built around dissonant intervals (particularly the minor second) and complex, asymmetrical rhythmic figures. Ultra-subtle variations of the material will move between enervating repetitions to moments of rapturously languid beauty across sometimes vastly uncomfortable time-spans – “String Quartet II” (1983) and “For Philip Guston” (1984) are both nearly five hours long in a single movement. Needless to say, these pieces place extraordinary demands on both performers and listeners.

The first piece I heard that really spoke to me was “Rothko Chapel” (1971) (New World, 1991) for soprano, mixed chorus, viola, celeste and percussion. Commissioned along with the painter Mark Rothko for the non-denominational chapel at the DeMenil Collection in Houston, Texas, Feldman’s music is as sublime and somber as Rothko’s paintings. Snippets of actual melody float above wordless choral harmonies punctuated by gentle clouds of percussion. But this music, while fairly accessible and, in some respects, conventionally “pretty,” is atypical of Feldman’s usual procedure.

The recording that finally opened my ears to the whole of Feldman’s work was a 1994 compilation of radio broadcasts on the German label Editions RZ. On “Piano Three Hands" (1957), Feldman himself performs with John Tilbury. Feldman’s touch is exquisite: extremely quiet with a minimum of attack, yet rich and full of overtones - and the rhythm (such as it is) almost “swings.” Hearing this recording was a revelation. Aha! This music is not just “interesting,” it has soul.

As for the CD at hand, “Patterns in a Chromatic Field” (1981) was written near the beginning of Feldman’s final phase of gargantuan works and at over 80 minutes, this single-movement piece pushes the capacity of the CD format to the limit. It is also an example of Feldman’s music at its most extreme. The opening minutes set the tone: a handful of dissonant intervals repeating a jagged yet insistent rhythm. After a long while, a lush consonance hovers briefly, only to take off into another angular and dissonant repeating figure. If you are willing to submit yourself to Feldman’s sound-world, the dissonances begin to sound like consonance and the consonances emerge as fleeting glimpses of the divine.

Morton Feldman was over 6 feet tall, weighed almost 300 pounds, and wore Coke-bottle thick eyeglasses. A native New Yorker, Feldman was as oversized and brash a person as his music was quietly delicate and subdued. He was voluble speaker and prolific writer and some of his talks and writings can be found online here. More of his prose writings have been gathered in Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2000) and Morton Feldman Says (London: Hyphen, 2006), a collection of lectures and interviews. Literate, opinionated, and oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny, Feldman’s writings offer unique insights into this singularly American composer. Rarely performed outside of New York and Europe, the last decade or so has fortunately seen a deluge of recordings on CD. Most notably, Mode has embarked on a series aiming to record his complete works. Superb recordings are also available on Hat-Art, CPO, Nonesuch, Bridge, Naïve, Argo, and other adventurous record labels.

Immersing myself in Morton Feldman’s austere and initially off-putting music has immeasurably enriched my musical life.

--rgc

Alice Coltrane, R.I.P.

Alice Coltrane died today at age 69. An obituary can be found online here. I hope there will be more information and tributes available tomorrow.

John Coltrane’s late-period music is profoundly important to me and Alice’s piano (and sometimes harp) playing is an integral element of its beauty and meaning. After John’s death in 1967, Alice went on to record a bunch of wonderful records for Impulse! including A Monastic Trio (1968), Ptah, The El Daoud (1970), Journey in Satchidananda (1970), and Universal Consciousness (1971). All of these records are readily available on nicely re-mastered CDs that are well worth hearing. In fact, I am listening to them all in chronological order as write this and they are all truly sublime.

I’m a lot less familiar with the Warner Bros. albums she made after that. I believe some of this stuff has been reissued recently and I intend to check it out.

Eventually, Alice Coltrane’s spiritual journey led her away from the commercial music world to form an ashram in California. The music that Alice Coltrane would perform in this period was purely devotional and made available only to initiates. Through my step-mother-in-law, Katie Atherton, I have a cassette tape of some of this music and it is beautiful, but strictly functional music for religious ceremony. I think I’ll dig that tape out and listen to it again. It would be interesting to further explore this “non-public” portion of Ms. Coltrane’s oeuvre.

After a 26 year long hiatus, Alice Coltrane returned to Impulse! with 2004’s Translinear Light. I would look at it at the record store, but I never bothered to pick it up - I’d read reviews that said it was a little “smooth” compared to her 70s records – but it was nice to know she was again making music, now with her sons Ravi and Avram Coltrane. I am now, belatedly, going to seek it out.

Music – art – aspires to immortality. While the artist passes away from this world, their work remains behind so that others may know that such transcendence is possible. I look forward to devoting some time to Alice Coltrane’s art and thereby celebrate her life.

Music Sales 2006

Nielsen Soundscan's Year-End Report is available here courtesy of Business Wire.

Physical album sales continue their steep decline with a -9.1% drop in units sold while digital album sales have risen a whopping 93.7%. Overall music sales are up 19.4% from 2005 due to such huge increases in download purchases and demonstrates a strong demand for music, even as the record labels are struggling with outdated business models.

What is particularly surprising about this report is that while sales of all other genres of music (except for soundtracks) are flat or down, "classical" music sales have risen a staggering 22.5% since 2005! What this all means exactly is interesting to speculate upon. Perhaps all those dire predictions of the death of classical music were a bit premature.

Fascinating stuff.

--rgc

Is Music Art? (Part One)

“Everybody thought they’re listening to anti-art when they’re listening to [John] Cage. They don’t know that the reason they’re annoyed is that it’s art."

-- Composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987) to Peter Gena in a 1982 interview, Morton Feldman Says : Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987, London: Hyphen, 2006, p.124).

Lizzy the Librarian forwarded to me a couple of interesting articles that reflect upon a topic I have been trying to write about, that is the problem of modern “classical” music (and modern “jazz” for that matter), its vanishingly small audience (at least in the USA), and this music’s relationship to the so-called fine arts.

Frank J. Oteri at New Music Box wrote a thoughtful essay wherein he observed how a recent MOMA retrospective of the relatively obscure, modernist (read “difficult”) painter Brice Marden drew huge crowds, while modernist music remains largely unheard in the concert halls, even in New York City. Oteri speculates on some of the reasons why the culture at large can accept the challenges of modern art in the museum, but will vehemently reject such challenges in music. He raises some essential issues and while the lively discussion that follows sometimes generates more heat than light, it is nonetheless a thought provoking read.

On the other hand, here is an example of a successful new music series in LA that has somehow managed to fill Frank Gehry’s (ultra-modernist) Disney Hall with an enthusiastic audience for concerts devoted to important contemporary composers.

Morton Feldman asked himself the question of whether or not music could be an art form and it is a serious question. Feldman’s tentative conclusion was that there are no art forms in music, only music forms - and this creates problems for the artist whose chosen medium is music.

This is a topic I hope to explore further.

--rgc

North v. South

I was going to try to avoid politics on my blog, but I was surprised to find an email I sent to Dr. Eric Alterman at Altercation was recently published on his blog.

Dr. Alterman’s post to which I responded is here.

My response is here.

If you scroll down, you’ll see that I am not the only one who took offense.

I am still contemplating a response, but in the meantime, see for yourself whether or not I (and everyone else) misread Dr. Alterman’s text.

--rgc

Writing About Music

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"

It's unclear who originally uttered this infamous quote. It's been attributed to Frank Zappa, Martin Mull, and, most authoritatively, to Elvis Costello. (For an in-depth look at its cloudy citation history, go here.) In any case, it is a profoundly true and correct statement.

Alex Ross is the "classical" music critic for The New Yorker, and is one of the best dancers about architecture I've ever read. He can make me interested in music I thought was decidedly uninteresting, like say, Shostakovich, simply through his sharp erudition, enthusiasm, and eloquence. Plus he's not a snob and can write equally thought-provoking articles on, say, Bob Dylan.

Alex Ross, along with Peter Schjeldahl, who writes about "art," are the best reasons to subscribe to The New Yorker (besides the cartoons). They are the finest critics working in America today.

--rgc

Now Playing: Derek Bailey

Derek Bailey and Tony Coe: BBC Radio broadcast, April, 1979 (CDR)
Derek Bailey: guitar
Tony Coe: clarinet

When I first heard Derek Bailey, I really didn’t know what to think. Here was a guitar player who built an entire style around the plinks and plonks, thumps and scrapes, and “accidental” harmonics of the mis-fretted note. My first response was: “This guy can’t play!” But once I realized that these sounds were deliberately and expertly executed, I began to comprehend just what an amazing a guitar player he really was. Like the painter Cy Twombly, Bailey attained an adult mastery of lost childhood creativity, unbounded by society’s rules and rigid expectations. Also like Twombly, these childlike “marks” serve a deep and very personal expressivity. But what really amazes me about Bailey is that he could also play with any other musicians, in any genre, and sound perfectly at home and indubitably himself without sacrificing a smidgeon of his utterly unique sound.

I don’t know much about Tony Coe. He plays clarinet exclusively here and sounds really good. Let me tell you from first-hand experience, the clarinet is one of the most difficult instruments in the world to play well and Coe sounds masterful. His woody tone contrasts nicely with Bailey’s plucked and bent wires and they’re intently yet playfully interacting with one another. Coe’s note choices are definitely interesting, obviously informed by his “modern classical” background. Each of the pieces, according to the BBC announcer, is named after a street in New Orleans (“Bourbon,” “DuMain,” “LaFitte,” etc.) and Coe’s clarinet sound evokes a Dixieland feel, though, to be sure, this is angular and abstract music. Superb!

Too bad, but this not available in stores.

Fortunately, John Zorn’s Tzadik label has released a number of wonderful CDs over the past several years of Bailey playing in a variety of interesting settings. The place to start for anyone wishing to encounter Mr. Bailey’s guitar playing for the first time should be Ballads (2002), a solo guitar recording of hoary old jazz standards that is simply stunning. One listen and there can be no doubt that Bailey knows exactly what he is doing and his deconstruction of familiar tunes like “Laura,” Stella By Starlight,” and “Georgia On My Mind” clearly demonstrates his mastery of the instrument. Once you accept his premise, check out Bailey in a pure free-improvisation setting with the Joseph Holbrooke Trio: The Moat Recordings (originally recorded in 1999, reissued in complete form by Tzadik 2006): two CDs of incredibly inventive music with drummer Tony Oxley and bassist (and “classical” composer) Gavin Bryars. My favorite of the Tzadik releases (or at least the one I listen to most often) is Mirakle (2000), which combines Bailey’s singular electric guitar with the heavyweight funk rhythm section of Jamaaladeen Tacuma on bass and Calvin Weston on drums. It shouldn’t work, but it does and it’s great fun. By the same token, Bailey’s collaboration with the Japanese noise band The Ruins (Saisoro (1995)) seems ridiculous, but is actually quite captivating. Again, Bailey is simply himself within a literally foreign context and creates something wholly unheard-of.

Tzadik has also issued Bailey’s last recordings on Carpal Tunnel (2006), which is as painful as its title. Be forewarned, this is not for the newbie or casual fan. Suffering from the above referenced disease, Bailey documented a course of re-learning the guitar in the form of an audio diary. The results are touchingly heroic, but ultimately hopeless and sad. It is a testimony to Bailey’s devotion to his art that he would struggle through a debilitating disease to continue playing the guitar, and perhaps given more time, he could have forged a new, new way of approaching the instrument. Alas, Derek Bailey died on Christmas Day, 2005 at the age of 75.

--rgc

CD/DVD-A Combos – A Trend I Like Very Much

Here’s some recent releases of some truly great records available in deluxe 2-disc packages which include a standard CD along with a DVD with a high resolution stereo (and sometimes) a 5.1 soundtrack, along with other fun stuff all for a list price of around $20.00. Definitely not a rip-off! How refreshing! More please!

I will try to write some more detailed reviews of these records, but for now, here are some examples of the best that digital technology has to offer us music fans, right here, right now:

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Live at the Fillmore East March 6&7, 1970 (Reprise)
The original Crazy Horse headlining over Miles Davis (!) at the famous Fillmore East in New York City, this is unfortunately only about 40 minutes of music. But what glorious music it is! Classic songs like “Down By The River” and “Cowgirl In The Sand” are given epic performances in spectacular (stereo only) sound. This is a must-have for all Neil Young fans. And, by the way, Miles Davis’ March 7, 1970 set is available on the 2001 Sony/Legacy CD, It’s About That Time, a mind-melting performance of Bitches Brew-era material with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, and Airto Moreia.

David Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name (Atlantic)
(originally released 1970)
A neglected masterpiece recorded with the cream of the West-Coast musicians including members of the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Joni Mitchell. This one remains largely unknown even among fans of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young. Maybe this deluxe reissue will change that unfortunate fact. Crosby’s ethereal, often-times wordless harmonies are angelic and the musical backings are superb. Hippie Heaven.

The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros.) (originally released 1999)
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Warner Bros.) (2002)
The Flaming Lips: At War With The Mystics (Warner Bros.) (2006)
Back in 1984, I never would have imagined the Flaming Lips, a scrappy little punk rock band from Norman, Oklahoma, would still be around, much less making the most ambitious symphonic pop music of our time. Exploiting the near-infinite potential of the Pro-Tools platform, this is digital recording technology pushed to its limit and the CD can hardly contain it all. The high-resolution DVD-A versions are a revelation: spacious, airy, three-dimensional, and utterly compelling. This stuff is the most sumptuous pop music since the Summer of Love. Oh, and these discs are loaded with bonus tracks, b-sides, videos, and other ephemera – you certainly get your money’s worth. At War With The Mystics features a video of Wayne Coyne’s commencement address prepared for his alma mater’s 2006 high school graduation ceremony which is both hilarious and earnestly inspirational.
Buy these records!

--rgc

Some More Lefsetz

Today, Bob had this to say:

>Vinyl
>
>Sounds better than CD, but it's NEVER COMING BACK!

I wrote:

The amazing thing is that VINYL NEVER WENT AWAY!
Vinyl sales are going up. How are CD/DVD sales going?

Look, I do not suffer from mere vinyl nostalgia. Vinyl is a pain
in the neck. I just want high-resolution digital at a fair price.
Until then, boy am I grateful that vinyl is still around. That doesn't
make me a luddite. It makes me a music lover.

--rgc

More Lefsetz Letter

I wrote this in response to Bob Lefsetz' latest email rant:

Hi, Bob,

Lots to think about in your latest rant, but I have to respond to this:

>DVD-A failed, as did SACD. Please, let it go. One world is >enough, for all of us. And in that one world, there are two channels...

Maybe. But does have to sound so mediocre? When digital music
can sound as good - maybe even better - than VINYL?? You
know what I mean: not just a two-dimensional simulacrum of music, but
a compelling, emotionally involving, rapturous listening experience?

People steal MP3s because they know they're not worth anything.
Fremer's right: People aren't buying music because they're not even
LISTENING to music. They're in the car, or through crummy ear-damaging
ear buds all the while doing other stuff and, for that, MP3 is "good enough."

But some of us care what it actually sounds like and would, you know,
like music to sound really good instead of really not so good. And
we're people who actually buy records - lots of 'em. MP3 is not even
remotely good enough to actually pay money for it.

Sony blew it again a-la-Betamax with SACD. Vastly superior to CD sound,
but a stupidly proprietary scheme that was too expensive to implement for
anyone but the truly hardcore. After predictably tepid sales, Sony
promptly abandoned the format (leaving those of us who actually bought the
things wondering if I'll still be able to play it back in 10 years).

DVD-A has a chance of remaining a viable format for high-resolution digital.
Sure, most folks don't have 5.1 setups, but they probably wish they had
the $/space to do so. Everyone has a DVD player and any DVD player
can play a CD. A high resolution stereo PCM soundtrack can be played
back on any DVD player. The difference in sound quality is stunning.

Please, let's let the format wars go. Let's admit that records are software
and deliver it via the most efficient - and high quality - media standard available.
Let's continue to upgrade the software, just make it backward compatable
with whatever 5 inch disc you throw at it. Throw on an MP3 track you can easily
load onto your i-Pod. This is easily and cheaply possible right now. Why is
it too much to ask?

Well, I think you know the answer to that. You write about the foolishness of the
music industry better than anyone.

Cheers,
--Rodger

Graduation Address, December 8, 2006

Graduation Address by Rodger G. Coleman
Southeastern Career College
December 8, 2006

My fellow graduates, faculty and staff of Southeastern Career College, families, and friends, we are gathered here this evening to celebrate a great accomplishment and to look forward to a great opportunity. I am honored to have been asked to speak to you and I hope that my words will reflect some of the thoughts, feelings, and aspirations of my classmates.

In an essay entitled, “An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man,” Albert Einstein wrote: “Alongside the development of individual abilities, the education of the individual aspires to revive an ideal that is geared towards the service of our fellow man, and that needs to take the place of the glorification of power and outer success.” According to Einstein, “only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.”

My experience at Southeastern Career College has convinced me that Mr. Einstein is correct. On behalf of my class, I would like to thank the staff and faculty of Southeastern Career College. Every one of you embody Einstein’s ideal with your boundless dedication to your students’ education. I want to thank you not only for the knowledge and expertise you so generously shared with us, but also for your enthusiasm, humor, and compassion. Thank you all.

I personally want to thank Mr. Joe Childress, with whom I had the pleasure of taking a number of classes. On the first day of my first class with Mr. Childress, he began by saying, in that inimitable voice: “Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a hard-ass.” Maybe being a little bit of a hard-ass is part of what makes Mr. Childress such an effective teacher. Mr. Childress is truly one of the very best teachers I’ve ever had, for any subject, anywhere. With only six weeks in which to learn a semester’s worth of material, it was something like trying to drink from a fire-hose. But Mr. Childress has a remarkable gift in his ability to make the most complex concepts understandable – indeed fascinating -- to every student in the classroom. He is deadly serious about the subject matter yet often laugh-out-loud funny and everyone walked out of every class having really learned something. My only regret for having graduated this program is that I will not have the privilege of taking another class with Mr. Childress. Thank you, Mr. Childress.

I want to especially thank my mom and dad; both of whom I wish could be here tonight. I was talking with my mom the other night about graduating and what this diploma means and she told me a story about my dad that I’d like to share with you all. My dad grew up dirt poor during the Great Depression and was the first person in his family to ever go to college. Through his own hard work and with the help of the GI Bill, my dad earned a degree from the University of Texas and was promptly hired to work for a big corporation in Houston. His boss at that time was a kindly and mentoring fellow and one day my dad asked him, “Why did you hire me? I didn’t really know anything about this business. What did the degree mean to you?” His boss replied, “The degree didn’t mean that you knew anything, but that you knew how to learn.” Thank you, Mom & Dad.

I also want to thank another great teacher, Ms. Diane Kuhn for not only giving life to a class about wills and estates, but for recommending me to an attorney friend of hers, Mr. Martin Sir, when he was looking for student to work part-time in his law office. And I want to thank Mr. Sir for taking a chance and hiring me almost a year ago when I was barely half way through the program and really didn’t have a clue about the reality of a law office. But, he trusted that I knew how to learn. This generosity of spirit is indicative of Mr. Sir’s devotion to public service that manifests itself not only in his law practice, but also in his community activism and his spiritual life. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to apply what I was learning in class to the service of actual clients and for the opportunity to learn more every day. I am now proud to be a full time paralegal at the Law Office of Martin Sir. Thank you, Ms. Kuhn and Mr. Sir.

Finally, I want to thank my beautiful and marvelous wife, Elizabeth for marrying me more than 12 years ago, for believing in me, and for being so supportive of my returning to school so late in life. Elizabeth is a constant inspiration to me. As a reference librarian at the Nashville Public Library, Elizabeth truly lives a life in service of others. Now that we know how to learn, we know how valuable a nice library and a helpful and knowledgeable librarian can be. The Nashville Public Library downtown is one of the most wonderful libraries in the world. As paralegals – as citizens - we should be grateful for such a library and librarians so magnificent. Thank you, Elizabeth. I couldn’t have done it without you.

And so, my fellow graduates, let us now celebrate our great accomplishment: we have learned many things, but most importantly, we have learned how to learn. As paralegals, we will have a duty to continue learning and Southeastern Career College has enabled us to fulfill that duty. As we go forward, the work that we will be doing as paralegals will have a profound impact on people’s lives, and it is an awesome responsibility. So, let us also rejoice in this wonderful opportunity: we now have the opportunity to live a life worth living: a life lived in the service of others.

Congratulations, Class of 2006.

What Am I doing?

I've been thinking about deleting this blog and starting over, but instead changed the subtitle to narrow my focus a bit. I think I was a bit over-ambitious.

While I don't see the point of writing about music exclusively, it is something I think a lot about and I've got stuff to say. I figure if I can use this blog to focus on music, I will be more inclined to actually do some writing. We'll see.

In the meantime, I formally graduated from SECC last night. I was "valedictorian" and gave an address. I may post it here. Anyway, it was a nice evening. I was even filmed for a potential TV commercial for the school. It would be a hoot if they used it.

But, see, I'm already getting that nauseous feeling writing about myself and my personal life that just freezes me in my tracks and makes me not want to write in this blog. Maybe I just need to get used to it. I mean, it's not like anyone actually READS this blog.

More Later.
--rgc

Tower Records, R.I.P.

"The Lefsetz Letter" featured a nice rant from Bob Lefsetz on the demise of Tower Records, which prompted a flurry of emails from his audience. (See http://lefsetz.com/wordpress for more info).

Having my own intense feelings about Tower Records, I sent Bob an email. I was not expecting to see it published on his blog/email list, but here it is:

Rodger Coleman: I've spent countless thousands of dollars at Tower
Records stores in Boston, New York, and here in Nashville. Yeah, the
staff always treated me like shit, even if they knew who I was and
that I was likely to spend money there week in, week out. And that
was annoying. But what really killed the Tower experience for me was
when they decided to start charging $1 or MORE over list price for
non-hype records. CDs are just TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE and THAT is
what's killing the music industry. Give me a break about downloading MP3s. MP3s
sound like shit. Hell, CDs sound like shit compared to a well made vinyl LP, but
MP3 or AAC is a joke. It might be fine in the car, but for serious listening? -
forget about it. I suspect that the CD pretty much killed the "home stereo"
experience for most people, hence the rush to portable, disposable MP3s, i-Pods,
and a musical culture on the decline. I'm willing to bet that if the record
industry and (former) market leaders like Tower priced CDs at $10 or less (like
what the vastly superior LP cost), they would still be selling and Tower Records
would still be in business. But no, the RIAA has decided it is more profitable
to hire mercenary law firms to sue their own customers. Now, there's a business
model! Hah! Sometimes I truly believe the record industry DESERVES
to die on the vine. And this is coming from someone who LOVES music, who
LOVES records, who LOVES record stores and spent his entire life spending EVERY
DISPOSABLE DOLLAR on records. But, it got to the point where I just simply
could not justify $20.00 for a crummy CD in a crummy jewel box with crummy
liner notes. You could walk into Tower and buy a DVD of the latest movie
with bonus features and multiple soundtrack options FOR LESS THAN
THE COST of the soundtrack CD. What an insult to musicians and music
lovers.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. The part of me that loves browsing record stores will
miss Tower. There will be no other game in town for jazz or classical records and that is a shame. But, to hell with $20.00 CDs. Enough is enough.

Heh. Well, then Bob publishes a bunch more emails and the one and only Michael Fremer had this to say:

Michael Fremer: Rodger Coleman wrote: "It might be fine in the car, but
for serious listening?" The biggest problem today is that most young people
don't do "serious listening." They don't know what that is. Music is for
background while you exercise, eat, screw, read or whatever. Even live music is
for the background. That's why people yap through concerts ---sometimes on
their cellphones. Serious listening means, stopping one's minds from yabbering
internally, and letting the artist communicate. A generation growing up
now doesn't know what that means. They can't sit still and just stop everything
going on and just LISTEN.... It needs to be taught, like meditation or it
will be lost forever. What we have now is "listeners" using musicians in a
parasitic relationship. They are there to provide an energy for the
parasite/listener to suck on to energize his or own lame thoughts instead of
shutting the fuck up and PAYING FULL ATTENTION......

Wow. The Lefsetz Letter goes out to tons of music industry honchos and musos. I am blown away that perhaps some of these people read what I wrote. So, I wrote Bob another email, which, again, much to my surprise was "published" today:

Rodger Coleman: I never expected that my email rant to you would wind up
being sent out on your mailing list. If I'd thought so, maybe I would have toned
down the profanity! But, to have Michael Fremer respond to something I said -
wow, what a rush. Fremer is largely responsible for making me realize that vinyl
is truly superior to CD and that you don't have to spend a fortune on playback
equipment to realize this. But, anyway, after sending you that email and talking
with my wife about all this stuff, I had a dream that night about shopping in a
funky record store, crawling around on the ground searching through every nook
and cranny for weird and wonderful treasures. The next day, I decided to make a
trip to Grimey's here in Nashville, a funky record store where the staff is
actually friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic about records. I bought the last
four Robert Pollard LPs (all of which were released this year!) and Sonic
Youth's latest on LP. Yep, that's right - brand new vinyl records. With
Pollard's latest LP on Merge you also get a coupon to download the album AND a
free CD of a live gig opening for Pearl Jam this past summer. Now THAT is
getting some value for your money (a whopping $13.99)! I couldn't wait to get
home from work and peel off the shrink wrap, savor that new vinyl and printer's
ink smell, and spin them all in a row. I drank too many beers and sat enraptured
to the glorious sound - or, got up and danced around the living room. It was an
experience I hadn't had in a long time, and it was thrilling in a way that no CD
has ever been, no matter how much I like the music. So, I got to thinking. Maybe
the death of the CD is necessary to have the music industry move forward. Maybe
the labels will move towards DVD as the delivery method. Maybe they'll embrace
lossless compression schemes like FLAC for downloads, price them reasonably, and
have DVDs (with or without video content) for physical goods (any DVD player
will reproduce a high-resolution PCM soundtrack). Maybe pricing could be more
dynamic and fair. Maybe the equipment manufacturers could adopt a uniform
standard that will play any 5 inch disc you throw at it. Maybe the MP3 could
serve as a free promotion tool, whetting the appetite for the high-quality
product. In any case, it sure looks like vinyl LPs will outlive the CD. Whoulda
thunk it a decade ago? So, Tower is dead. Long live the indie record
store!

I think that about sums up what I have to say about Tower Records. Check Out the Lefsetz Letter. You won't be disappointed.

-rgc

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today I saw Dad alive for the last time.

We got the word that he'd suffered a massive heart attack and drove as fast we could from Nashville to Bella Vista, Arkansas.

Amazingly, once the whole family was there in the hospital, he woke up.

He tried to speak, but his mouth was full of tubes. He started to cry when he saw his grandchildren. He was getting upset and we had to let him get some rest. He waved goodbye like he knew it really was goodbye.

He was dead before dawn.

It's been a long hard year for me - for everyone in the family - but most especially for Mom. I am grateful that she has come out the other side of a most horrible grief.

A year is a respectful amount of time to mourn. I am hopeful that this anniversary will mark a new beginning for the family.

It seems glib typing these words, but what worth is having this blog without immortalizing such occasions.

This one's for you, Dad.

-rgc

Done With Classes!

I had my last class on Tuesday, October 3!

This is my first weekend without having to worry about homework, studying for exams, working on projects or otherwise stressing out about school. What a relief! It has been a long two years, but I have achieved my goals: 1) an A in every single class and 2) a job when I'm finished.

Now, I just have to complete 120 hours of work to satisfy my "externship" and will officially graduate with my ABA-approved AAS in Paralegal Studies. I will don a cap and gown on December 8, 2006 and receive my diploma. Also in December, I intend to sit for the certification exam so I will then be: Rodger Coleman, Certified Legal Assistant.

I wish that Dad were still alive to see me now. I know he would have been proud.

--rgc