Absolute Beethoven

I don't write about how I earn my living very often. My three readers ought to be thankful for that.

If you don't know what I do, I work as a freelancer in the exciting world of music preparation, toiling away at home, keeping my own bizarre hours, occasionally meeting terrifying deadlines, just as occasionally wondering if I'll ever get another gig.  I've been doing this for nearly 30 years. I make the joke "It looks like this job is going to work out." (The rest of my work history is better known: before going freelance I worked for Frank Zappa for seven years, also doing music preparation. I can honestly say that working for Frank Zappa is as close as I've ever come to having a real job.)

These days my biggest client is composer John Adams.  John has produced a steady stream of orchestra pieces, concertos, chamber works and operas over the years. His music gets played lots. I really appreciate all the jobs he's sent my way. Thanks, John.

Occasionally John writes something which appeals particularly to my own individual musical taste. It should not be surprising that I don't like all his music equally. I don't like all of any composers' music equally. Domenico Scarlatti gets the closest, I think, but even he wrote a few things I'm not too keen on. Yes, there are a few composers who never wrote a single piece I enjoy. And of course, as the decades pass, my opinions are subject to change.

Anyway, a few years ago John composed an orchestra showpiece which I think is perfectly fantastic. It's called Absolute Jest. It's a sinfonia concertante, a cross between a concerto and a symphony. Instead of one solo instrument there is a small ensemble of soloists, in this case a string quartet.

This work was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 2012. I wanted to hear it played live bck then. That didn't happen because my life was just too busy (see above under "terrifying deadlines"). Later John made changes to Absolute Jest. He didn't simply alter a few harmonies and fix a transition or two the way he (and every other composer who ever lived) usually does after new works are premiered. This time he completely junked the entire first ten minutes and composed all new music. Ten minutes is enough to have created a whole new piece.  I liked the original version and I like the new version too.  I've given up trying to understand why he needed to make such massive changes.  I guess that's why he's the composer and I'm the copyist.

Earlier this month I flew up to San Francisco to hear the revised Absolute Jest at Davies Symphony Hall, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.  They recorded the concerts and promise to eventually release an album which includes this piece.  Watch for it.

Absolute Jest is a fun listen.  And it has an epic, travelogue feel to it.  Other Adams orchestra pieces with similar qualities include Slonimsky's Earbox, Guide to Strange Places and My Father Knew Charles Ives, all favorites of mine.  Absolute Jest has a certain humorous, good-timey wild joy-ride in the countryside, I wonder what's waiting around the next curve, hang on or you might miss something feel to it, which (you may have already guessed) I really like.  This side of John's music goes at least as far back as Short Ride in a Fast Machine

The composer demurs when it is suggested that the word "jest" in the title might imply some kind of musical "joke".   The piece was originally subtitled "a scherzo", the musical word for joke, but he took that out.  I agree that Absolute Jest is not a musical stand-up routine, ala Hoffnung or PDQ Bach or even Mozart's Musical Joke.  When asked what "jest" really means in his title the composer points to the word's archaic meaning.

Okay, if this work is more of a "narrative of exploits" then it's an enjoyable tale, a bucket-of-popcorn summer blockbuster or an extended personal anecdote or maybe a humorous short story.  There are no one-liners or punch lines.   Once it's over you know you've been somewhere fun and had a good time.  Throughout the piece you're never called upon even once to consider the eternal verities, like god or love or death, those inescapable banes of serious classical music.

There is one musical eternal verity, however, you need to know about to understand Absolute Jest properly. That would be Beethoven.

John has taken bits of Beethoven's themes and woven them throughout the fabric of Absolute Jest.   The essential culture of classical music is saturated by our imaginings of who Beethoven was and what his music means. If you think of classical music as a kind of religion (as I often do), then Beethoven has become one of its most revered graven images.

John Adams has added Beethoven themes to his music without the heavy sense of cultural gravity Ludwig usually gets.  One of the bits he chose (from Ludwig's late quartets) becomes a spritely musical hook which bounces around throughout the piece and stays in my head long after listening.  Like an ear worm.

As a result of all these references, the story which Absolute Jest tells is inescapably about Beethoven. The most performed living composer of classical music wants his audience to consider Beethoven.  And how does he do this?  By telling us a story!  A narrative.  A "jest".

(As an aside, here's a story about Beethoven told by Charles Bukowski:)

Now, at this point in my story I desperately want to tell you that Beethoven is funny.  The problem is that he's not, not at all, at least not very often and not intentionally.  Beethoven is the epitome of serious, the ur angst-ridden artist, the ultimate example of creativity beset by a cruel cosmos.

And I'm here to say "Well, screw that."  My opinion is that it's healthy for the artform when the icons of classical music are brought a little closer to the human level, especially an icon which has been worked over and beaten up for seemingly ever.  All those guys who wrote the great classics were human, after all, including Beethoven.  We ought to be able to enjoy their music without getting all cosmic on it.

And please remember - I'm not implying that John Adams agrees with any of this.  I'm just having my personal say about the matter.  My thoughts prompted by his music.

In spite of my opinions, the use of Beethoven source material in a brand new concert work like Absolute Jest ought to help endear it to audiences.  One piece is not likely to change the reverant opinions of Beethoven held by most serious classical music fans.  If it doesn't do that, then I hope that the people who listen enjoy the ride anyway.

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For no good reason, here are some appearances of Beethoven's music in our popular culture:

My least favorite Beethoven work accompanies the Harlem Shake:

Dudley Moore, a pianist, performs his classic Beethoven parody:

Rowlf, another pianist, plays Beethoven with a little coaching from Ludwig's bust:

Beethoven's music gets used in televisions commercials quite often. This might be the stupidest one of all.

Beethoven's own idea of a jest joke?

Eric Peterson offers this Beethoven-themed commercial as another candidate for stupidest ever:

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Links from out of the past -  other fun Mixed Meters articles about Beethoven:

Everybody Loves Beethoven (probably).   (see a picture of Beethoven's skull, read about the teaching of evolution.)

Stories of Almost Everyone  - an excerpt from Eduardo Galeano's book detailing how Beethoven's Ninth Symphony can mean just about whatever anyone wants it to mean.

LvB's on my list of Ten (or Eleven) Most Influential Classical Composers - each composer is described warts and all.

The Lifespan of Classical Music - a nearly Beethoven-free rant

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More links from out of the past - other fun Mixed Meters articles about John Adams

In which David writes new notes for a John Adams piece  (plus a short interview with the composer)

In which I read the book that John Adams wrote (I pick some fun quotes from Hallelujah Junction)

Hell Mouth, the name of John's blog; I quote something he wrote there about me.  (Also, see Ivy the late Six-Toed Cat next to a towering stack of Adams music).

Composers About Composers: Richard and John and Richard - three composers discuss composing.  Guess who said "it's easier to become a Catholic Saint than a truly Great Composer."  (me)

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Fast Metronome Tags: orchestra music. . . Beethoven. . . Adams

John Cage's Second Century

The day on which John Cage would have turned 100 years old was last week.  In certain circles it was a big deal.  (Here's a list of events.)

I am offering two recordings of the music of John Cage.  Both were performed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s on concerts produced by the Independent Composers Association.  I no longer remember exactly why I saved these cassette recordings.  Subconciously, I guess, I knew that I would need material for my blog one day, once my hair turned gray.

Both concerts were apparently reviewed by the L.A. Times although I don't have access to either article nor to concert programs.  I do remember that the reviewer remarked how Atlas Eclipticalis felt like the 'classical' work on a program of modern music.  Imaginary Landscape was part of a tape music concert which also included pieces by Scott Fraser, Luc Ferrari and Jonathan Harvey.

listen to John Cage Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music - 1756 seconds - November 16, 1982 - The House, Santa Monica, California - The Independent Composers Assn. Ensemble, Delores Stevens, pianist, Stephen Mitchell, conductor

listen to John Cage Imaginary Landscape #4 with Radio Music - 497 seconds - May 21, 1983 - Stella-Polaris Gallery, Los Angeles, California - The Independent Composers Assn. Radio Ensemble

(Read about: why I have this flyer and how I know the other composers on the tape concert.  At some point I made a copy of the Atlas Eclipticalis tape at half speed.  I much preferred listening to it that way.)

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As someone whose musical thinking was greatly influenced by Cage's work and ideas, I would be remiss to let this occasion pass without comment. On the other hand, these days I'm really more interested in observing how Cage is being remembered by the classical music establishment than I am in the man or his music.

I see Cage as the ultimate 20th century iconoclastic artist, someone who smashed the sacred ideas of the music world. In their place he brilliantly offered indeterminacy, new performance techniques, electronics, wildly inventive compositional systems and a sense of calm, unflappable, detached theatricality.  He leavened this mixture with a galaxy of personal anecdotes, ideas from Zen teachings, mycology and the force of his own personality.

Indeed, I believe that the man himself sets Cage apart from the other composers of his time.  He injected himself uniquely into his music by performing, lecturing or just being charming.   In his second hundred years how essential will his persona be to the continued acceptance of his music?  Eventually everyone who directly knew and revered Cage will be gone.  Time will tell us if his music alone will continue to inspire new listeners.  Or maybe his writings and ideas will motivate future generations to become fans.  

In the coming decades the ears of the audience will, no doubt, continue to blend the music of the entire post-World War II avant-garde into a more homogenous musical experience.  Although there will be plenty of academic types to make plenty of fine distinctions, it will be harder and harder for more casual listeners to choose sides in those ancient artistic conflicts.  Total control via serialism or total randomness using chance operations?  As it turned out, the aesthetics were much the same either way.

The centennial celebrations are heavy with the idea that Cage was a strong artistic wind that will blow through the ages.  I suppose it is possible that Cage, by the year 2112, could land a spot in the pantheon of the greatest dead white male composers.  Even so "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Cage" would be quite a stretch.  I wouldn't be surprised if he comes to be regarded as the essential 20th century serial composer, eclipsing all those famous Europeans and academic Americans of the last fifty years.

Cage made a big deal out of studying with Schoenberg - and spent much of his later career trying to curry the approval of his long-dead teacher.  Here's an excerpt from a fascinating L.A. Times article by Mark Swed about Cage's early life in Los Angeles:

Still the young composer continued to, as he put it, worship Schoenberg like a god. He took away from Schoenberg the idea that a composer always needed some kind of system. And Cage always came up with one.

Schoenberg would likely have said that music needs more than a system of rules.  I'm pretty sure he would have insisted that music also requires meaning and expression.

Recently, in a BBC interview with Norman Lebrecht, John Adams talked about John Cage (This is from the 9/3/12 podcast, starting about 15'48")

Actually there was a four or five year period when I was not that cognizant of minimalism.  I was a real acolyte of John Cage. . . . I knew all my John Cage very well and I was very deeply imbued in John's orthodoxy.  I do think that Cage is a very orthodox composer.  That surprises people because they think of him as an iconoclast but he actually is a strangely intolerant composer in a certain way, when it comes to anything which doesn't fit into his very precise world.  That means most of western music whether it's Miles Davis or Beethoven.  Eventually I just had to throw that out.  Because I had fun doing John Cage and you could talk about it forever but my background and my musical breeding had brought me up to love great music.  Also I keep going back to this experience about music is essentially the art of feeling and Cage had no place in that.  

(Here's a fun anecdote about Cage's intolerance.)

We can argue later about what Cage is and what Cage is not.  After that we can take a swing at what is great music and what is not.  Or we can just agree to disagree.

Right now the question I am more interested in is 'How will perceptions of Cage change over time?'  The best way to find out is to simply wait and see.  It's more fun to guess.

I expect that the great iconoclast will gradually be transformed by his remaining acolytes into a great icon.  He will be revered, Zen-like, in concerts and concert halls.  Cage, I'm sure, would have liked nothing better.  I also expect that the manner in which his music is performed will become increasingly conventional and prescribed.  That's sad, but it is the way of what we call classical music.

Personally, the harder it becomes to experience the music of John Cage on a street corner, the more we will lose what I think is the real value of his work and life.

As John Cage has said, music is all around us if only we had ears. There would be no need for concert halls if man could only learn to enjoy the sounds which envelop him, for example at Seventh and Broadway at four p.m. on a rainy day.

(That quote comes from the spoken introduction to the 1970 Everest recording of Variations IV by John Cage.)

(Seventh and Broadway: 1 2 3 4 5 6)

Random Tags: saintdom. . . opposition. . . podgy. . . laburnum. . . exclamation. . . gargoyle

In Which David Writes New Notes For A John Adams Piece

Last summer I wrote my own program notes for Short Ride In A Fast Machine.  The notes explain why.  Afterwards there's a short Q&A with the composer.

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The goal of this little essay is to tell you about John Adams' Short Ride In A Fast Machine and to include tips on what to listen for during a performance and also to explain why my own name appears on the final page of the orchestra member's parts and how that led to my writing this essay for the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra performance. The real trick will be to keep it short enough so that reading these program notes takes less time than listening to the piece itself, just over 4 minutes.

Short Ride In A Fast Machine was composed in 1986 for the Great Woods Music Festival in Massachusetts where it was played by the Pittsburg Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. It is subtitled "Fanfare for Great Woods" but Short Ride is really too long for use as an actual fanfare, a ceremonial introductory piece. In 1985 John wrote a companion fanfare called Tromba Lontana. That is as quiet as Short Ride is exuberant.

John explained the title: “You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”  (Yes, I certainly remember riding in my brother-in-law's Corvette and swearing never to do it again.) Unlike the famous 1923 musical depiction of a short ride on a steam train, Pacific 231 by Arthur Honegger, Short Ride In A Fast Machine isn't really a tone painting. John Adams' machine is pure musical adrenaline. There are plenty of twists and turns. It starts out a full speed and never even thinks of slowing down. By the end the chances are good you'll want to hear this ride again.

Short Ride is constructed on a rock steady beat played by the lowly woodblock. The other instruments, mostly, try to distract you from this solid foundation. The snare drum is one of the first offenders and then the low brass insist on playing four notes while the woodblock plays only three. My best advice: If you lose track of what's going on, keep listening for that woodblock. Eventually all the brass play longer notes over the charging rhythm and the piece ends with a short recap of the opening.

Short Ride may have a steady tempo but it doesn't have a perceptible meter, the regular alternation of strong and weak musical beats. If you watch the conductor, of course, you can see the meter, but you can't hear it. Short Ride is not in two like a march, or in three like a waltz, or in any meter. Instead there is a constant unfolding of rhythm without obvious downbeats. This feature has become a hallmark of John Adams' musical style.

Short Ride In A Fast Machine is early John Adams. It was composed at the same time he was working on his breakthrough opera, Nixon in China. Just one year earlier, in 1985, John had finished his first large symphony called Harmonielehre. I was asked to help prepare the performance materials, the parts, for Harmonielehre. The job is called "music copying". It's certainly more technical than it is artistic and most concert audiences know nothing about it. The task is to put the information each player needs into their individual parts as clearly as possible. Of course these days it's all computerized but back then everything was done by hand, using fountain pens and straight edges and translucent paper called vellum. The vellums were reproduced in small quantities by an ozalid machine, an ancient beast mainly used for blueprints. Ozalid prints smelled strongly of ammonia.

After I had finished my graduate music studies I managed to support myself as a freelance music copyist. I never suspected it would actually become my career. Because of my work on Harmonielehre John asked me to be his regular copyist, a job I still hold. "What's wrong with you?" he said back then, "You don't make mistakes." (If only.) But being John's copyist was never a full time gig and I felt the need to advertise my talents to other potential clients. In my imagination a good way to do this was directly on the music itself. So I wrote "Copied by David Ocker" at the bottom of the last page of each part. Sometimes I even added my phone number. No extra work ever came my way because of this. Eventually I wised up.

Surprisingly, the parts I copied in 1986 for Short Ride In A Fast Machine appear to still be in use today and my name survives on the last pages. I learned this from Janet Polasky, bassoonist in the Portsmouth Symphony. Janet and I knew each during a previous millennium as undergraduates at Carleton College. We played in a woodwind quintet together. Today we've re-established our friendship, at least in the Facebook sense, and she suggested I write these program notes. I'm happy to oblige. I'll probably reproduce them in my egocentric blog at mixedmeters.com, which - like this essay - is mostly about me.

 

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MIXED METERS INTERVIEWS JOHN ADAMS (June 2010)

MM:  Way back then, how did you feel about my advertising myself at the end of the parts?

JA: I never had a problem with your "advertising." You worked hard and always delivered on time, and if you got some extra jobs as a result, all the better.

MM: Do you remember saying "What's wrong with you, you don't make mistakes."? (it was an answering machine message)

JA: I don't remember anything I said into an answering machine ever---other than "Are you there? I know you're there! Please pick up!!"

MM: Do you agree with Leslie that the first sentence of my program notes was way too long?

JA: No, not too long. I'm the one who writes things that are too long.

Remember that "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" first had the horrible title "Fanfare for Great Woods." I was obliged to use that title for the first performances because it was a request from MTT to compose a piece for him to conduct to celebrate the very first concert ever at a new outdoor pavilion called "Great Woods" in a town about an hour south of Boston. The only thing I recall about the premiere is that the grounds weren't yet finished, that there were Porta-potties in the parking lot, and that the night before there had been a horrific June rainstorm, causing floods of water to muddy up the still unplanted grounds surrounding the auditorium.

And, oh yeah: "Lincoln Portrait" was narrated by Michael Dukakis, then still governor of Massachusetts. He delivered the lines with all the dramatic thrust of someone ordering plumbing fixtures at Home Depot.

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We Get Emails:

(Jan. 5, 2011)

Hi David,  Just wanted to let you know what a great laugh I had today whilst practising “short ride in a fast machine” when at the end of the piece I read “David Ocker: Tired Music Copyist”.

All the best from Hamburg, Graham Cox (Keyboards, Bamberger Symphoniker)

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The Portsmouth Symphony is NOT the Portsmouth Sinfonia.

John Adams, on his blog Hell Mouth, writes about what really happened when preparing the parts to Harmonielehre.  (Note: I am NOT any of the copyists John mentions nor was I even aware of most of his story - although I did recently leave a supposedly tongue-in-cheek blog comment - for which I apologize.) 


Fast Machine Tags: Portsmouth Symphony. . . John Adams composer. . . Short Ride in a Fast Machine. . . music copyist

Hell Mouth

John Adams, the most successful composer, has been my top client for decades. Hey John, thanks for all the work! (I mean, really.)

But he has shown very unusual lack of judgment recently by starting his own blog, Hell Mouth. I think the picture which begat this strange name must have been taken by John's wife, the photographer Deborah O'Grady.

Hell Mouth is starting at a furious pace: he's written five posts, extensive essays, in a little over a week. Here at MM I feel overworked if I do five short posts a month. But I've been at this for a while (4 years last month) and understandably my enthusiasm has waned.

John is a good writer. His skills have been honed recently by his biography Hallelujah Junction. I like his adjectives.

One of John's posts is entitled: On Surviving a First Rehearsal discussing the composition and premier of his most recent work City Noir (actually his third symphony). The public perception of how a piece of music travels from a composer's brain to a concert stage is a complete mystery to nearly everyone - even to some musicians. My job puts me right in the middle of one facet of that process. This explains why a lot of people have no clue about what I do for a living.

John devotes one paragraph to me.

City Noir is so densely layered that I need two full manuscript pages to embrace all the parts. Hell for the copyist, who is nonetheless unfazed, a total pro. David—started out playing clarinet with Frank Zappa. After 24 years knows my intentions nearly well enough to fill out a line that I’ve forgotten to write out.

Very cool.


Later John mentions the first rehearsal of City Noir led by boy wonder Gustavo Dudamel in Walt Disney Hall. I was one of very few people allowed to listen. The musicians had prepared for the rehearsal but none of them could have much of an inkling how John intended their parts to fit together. Loud things came out soft. Soft things loud. It came apart. It came back together again. Somehow Dudamel kept it all racing along - the entire piece. When he conducts, his hair subdivides the beat.

The composer, conductor and all the players were hard at work. Their job was to make City Noir sound correct; they had a very limited time for this. On the other hand, my job had been completed weeks before. I was just hanging out, listening in a manner none of them could afford, following the score as it whipped past.

And I was blown away. A roller coaster with breakneck twists and turns could never be that much fun. It was a simply amazing, mind-blowing thirty minutes of music, as if the spirit of Charles Mingus had somehow gotten into the souls of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was rough. It was raw. It rocked. Most likely I was the only one there enjoying this experience, it was indeed a great time which I shall not soon forget. At the end I just laughed.

Of course, you could never intentionally make an orchestra play like that. You do not tell a symphony orchestra to "Wail". By the second rehearsal the piece was taking its proper shape. Each rehearsal refined the music a bit more. I liked the finished piece as well. It's also a wild ride. But not as wild as that first reading.

Future orchestras, preparing City Noir, will have recordings to refer to so players will know when to project and when to hold back. The one-time unique experience I witnessed, nothing at all like the piece itself, is lost forever.


John also mentions how the players ask him questions - including about the B Double Sharp. I heard a lot about this note before and during the rehearsals. For you non-musicians, a B Double Sharp is a completely theoretical musical notation - it sounds the same as the familiar pitch C sharp. I can't think of a reason it would ever be used legitimately. Any suggestions?

This particular B Double Sharp is played by the Second Violins, Violas and Second Trumpet in measure 183 of movement one of City Noir. I just checked again. It really is in the manuscript - twice. Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have just changed it to a C#. The music would have sounded identical and no one would have noticed. Even the composer himself.


Read about how I was reduced to tears by a performance of one of John's pieces.
Read any or all of the Mixed Meters posts tagged "John Adams".




Hell Mouth Tags: John Adams. . . Hell Mouth. . . City Noir

In which I read the book that John Adams wrote

I started working as a music copyist for composer John Adams about 1985 on a little piece he called Hamonielehre. I've worked on a lot more of his music since then.

We live in different California urban areas positioned on different cultural tectonic plates. Our communications have always been principally by remote technologies: first by phone, then by fax and now by email. It's rare for us to see each other, rarer still to talk in person. Our last conversation happened during a hair-raising night-time rush hour drive through Palo Alto, California.

Lately John has occasionally mentioned "my book" but never really explained what he meant. It turned out to be his autobiography entitled Hallelujah Junction which is also the name of his piano duet which is also the name of an actual junction. (See it in Google Maps by clicking here.)

More surprisingly, last week he honored me by sending actual Word files of an actual complete draft. So far I've gotten as far as chapter five (out of fifteen.)


I asked his permission to quote from Hallelujah Junction here. He agreed but added that the quotes I picked were "funny". I intend them as "teasers", little bits to make you wonder just what he's talking about. Maybe they'll give an impression of his prose style.

The real point is that I am reading John Adams' autobiography. And you are not.

I'm finding an awful lot of interesting stuff I never knew. (Anything in purple is a quote.)


Another patient walked around with a harmonica stuffed into his mouth. When he smiled his face became the front grille of an automobile. He serenaded us by moving the harmonica with his lips while conducting with his two free hands.


The trip was symphonic in form, with an exposition, development and recap. Or maybe it was a rondo…I forget.


If I’d learned anything from John Cage, there was certainly no evidence in my Quintet for Piano and Strings, music that sounded like it could have been composed in 1910 Vienna by a young man bent on committing a triple murder-suicide.


Tacky, laughably hokey strip clubs lined both sides of neighboring streets, and each had its own sleazy barker, dressed in regulation loud, horrific Seventies-style bellbottoms and Hawaiian shirt. His job was to coax the reluctant tourist into the dark interior. “Come on in, sir, take a peek. It’s on the house. Ladies invited, too.”


... and then staying up nights until the building closed, huddled in my office with a soldering iron, my desktop covered with surplus resistors, capacitors and circuit board chips that I had scrounged at a flea-market near the Oakland airport.


I vividly recall standing patiently in the park with my microphone poised over a pile of dog poop, recording the buzz of several blissed-out flies as they hovered over their find.


Between the toxin of the bee stings and the shock of hearing my piece for the first time, my nervous system began yet again to go into red alert. An hour later I found myself on a bed in the emergency room of the Santa Cruz hospital connected to an IV dripping adrenaline into my arm while a man who’d nearly lost his finger to a chainsaw moaned in the neighboring bed.



The top picture is John at Stanford University after the premier of his Son of Chamber Symphony. The second picture, which appeared in Mixed Meters previously, was taken in Disney Hall. Click pictures for enlarged views. The music bit is John's handwriting.

Read previous MM posts concerning John Adams by clicking here.

John's own website is www.earbox.com where I could find no mention of his book


Hallelujah Tags: John Adms. . . Hallelujah Junction. . . autobiography. . . composers

Composers About Composers: Richard and John and Richard

RICHARD STRAUSS

It may be as much of a surprise to you as it is to me: I've been reading an actual book: The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans It's the second book of a trilogy and it covers the Nazi dictatorship during peacetime, 1933 until 1939. Evans' prose is a surprisingly easy read.

Under the grander topic of propaganda is a chapter about music. Classical music was considerably more important there in Germany then than it is here in the U.S. now. Richard Strauss, Germany's most famous living composer, became President of the Reich Music Chamber, the organization responsible for unifying the music world according to Nazi ideals. (Here's some background.) Strauss, to his credit, didn't have the cajones to play hardball with the Nazis - but apparently he did have plenty of composerly ego.


Here's a short excerpt from page 203 of the book, ending with a quote from old Richard himself:

Great orchestras continued to perform great music under the baton of great conductors, although the range of music performed, and the number of prominent conductors who directed it, were both smaller than before 1933. Yet many considered that there were no new great composers. Strauss himself took this view. If anything, it even increased his already unshakeable sense of his own importance as the heir of the great tradition of German composers. 'I am the last mountain of a large mountain range, ' he said: 'After me come the flatlands."

JOHN ADAMS

Mixed Meters regulars will know of my relationship with John Adams. Along with allowing me to make a living in music, I get a unique (if somewhat tunnel-vision) look at his scores long before they're performed. I've known him for many years but that doesn't mean we get many chances to talk. So to supplement my from the wings view of THE in-demand living composer, I resort to reading what he says to the media.

Last summer, the premiere of his Doctor Atomic Symphony was broadcast over the Internet by the BBC. Here's a paragraph transcribed from the back announcement (what the announcer said over the applause at the end) :

"Well, I like something John Adams said recently, when he was talking about being a contemporary classical composer in today's American cultures, being pretty much a useless activity even though he's one of the most performed living composers. He says he's off the broad cultural radar in the U.S.A. but that he consoles himself by thinking that Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were unappreciated and misunderstood in their lifetime and are now feted as amongst America's greatest cultural treasures. "I guess that's why we call it classical", he added "we're buying long term bonds here." (Andrew MacGregor, BBC announcer.)

Recently John has been in Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun website has this article by Tim Smith. John is quoted:

"There are a lot of composers today," Adams said, "just not a lot of original ones. You could count the number of great composers today on half a hand."

Later in the article he names names. Of course John's opinions are filtered through the critic's prose. To quibble about words for a bit, I think John might have been telling us who he thinks are the (other) "good" composers these days, those whose music he himself likes. But the quote and the article seem to confuse "originality" and "greatness" two very different things.

Here's a picture of John posing for a publicity photo in Disney Hall during December 2005.


Being "great" means being accepted, even revered, by lots of people over a very long time. These days it means competing with guys like Bach or Beethoven. John is indeed a candidate for inclusion someday. Our culture doesn't allow easy entry into this category. Judging by the recent head counts it's easier to become a Catholic Saint than a truly Great Composer.

On the other hand "originality" means breaking barriers, being unique, unpredictable and unclassifiable. There's a whole spectrum of originality ranging from too much ("eccentric" "weird" or "incomprehensible") to not enough ("derivative" "repetitive" or "old-fashioned"). We demand just the right amount of originality from our contemporary music. We want it to be more original than pop music but not so original that we can't enjoy it at first hearing.

As John's elevation among the mountain range of living composers continues to increase he probably gets asked the "who else" question more and more. The question itself and apparently his recent responses tend to focus peoples attention on fewer and fewer candidates. Too bad about that.


RICHARD EMMET

I met Richard Emmet long ago at the CIA.¹ I worked with him both at the ICA ² and at the ICA ³. Then he showed good sense, moved away from LA to Portland, where he raised a family and is now finding happiness.

Several months ago he visited Southern California for the first time in a long while. Here's a picture of him at a local Thai restaurant attacking a plate of Mango Sticky Rice with great determination.


While he was here we were able to talk a little about the music we've both been writing lately. I promised to send him a disc of my stuff - which I have yet to do. Until then I suggested that he listen to some of my pieces on this very website (over there in the left hand column). Richard's own website, with samples of his music, is available here.

Richard did find a few moments to listen and he wrote about his reactions.

"Well, it took me awhile, but I finally listened to several of your electronic pieces. I don't think I can fully express how impressed I was. Your music is unmistakably unique: it has attitude, humor, amazing variety and tonal coloring, endless surprises and strange juxtapositions, great use of spatial perspective, and whatever this means, it feels like it could only have come from California. It has echoes of Harry Partch and maybe a bit of FZ [Frank Zappa], but it is completely your own. I hope you continue doing this."

I was flattered. He agreed to let me publish his comments here. Obviously Richard is a man of rare intelligence and perception. I don't really understand why my music could only come from California. Maybe he'll leave a comment and explain.

Meanwhile, here's a close up of that same plate of Mango Sticky Rice. It was very good; this picture is has the more accurate color.



Cultural Radar Tags: Richard Strauss. . . Richard J. Evans. . . Richard Emmet. . . John Adams. . . contemporary composers. . . great composers. . . original composers. . . California composers. . . Iowa composers

FOOTNOTES:

¹ Richard and I met while students at the California Institute of the Arts.
² Richard and I were both active in the Independent Composers Association.
³ Richard and I were both employees of InterContinental Absurties, Frank Zappa's production company.

The New Yorker and The Hero Composer in Los Angeles

I think of Playboy and The New Yorker in much the same way. I was exposed to both publications in my twenties not with subscriptions but with stacks of hand-me-down back issues belonging to friends. Each magazine reflected an imaginary fantasy world of my young adult brain, one professional, the other sexual. I read both in the same way - starting at the back I would thumb through to the front looking for cartoons. As it turned out I was almost forty before I ever visited New York City, over fifty when I first rode the subway alone.

It's been quite a while since I've seen either publication. Recently I wanted to read the Alex Ross New Yorker article about Esa-Pekka Salonen. I know Esa-Pekka personally because I've worked on most of his new music since the last millennium (well, since 1999) and even edited some of his pieces for publication.

My neighborhood Rite Aid (that's a drug store) has a huge wall of magazines so I figured I could walk up there and get a copy. I found no New Yorker. A clerk asked a supervisor "Do we carry a magazine called The New Yorker?" I inferred that he had never heard of it. Later I found my copy hidden on a top shelf at Vroman's, a local independent bookstore. I've read there are now more New Yorker subscribers in California than in New York.


In case you run across a stack of back issues and want to read this fine article, the cover shows a young hip couple wearing black standing in front of a huge ersatz Jackson Pollock action painting completely absorbed by the tiny video screen of the camera they have just used to photograph that very painting. I can relate to their motivation completely; they want to save the experience for later. The remaining illustrations in this article are various ersatz accidental modern art pieces that I have saved for later (i.e. now) from my trips to that great gallery space called Pasadena.

Anyway, old habits remain and I opened my new copy of The New Yorker from the back and skimmed forward reading the cartoons. There seemed fewer of them and some inside illustrations were in color and the type was bigger. Does bigger type mean an aging readership with deteriorating eyesight? Probably.


Alex Ross describes Esa-Pekka exceptionally well - I could attest to every description of his personality and behavior. I wondered about just one thing: that E-P would only know who Jabba the Hutt was via his young son Oliver. I've discussed science fiction with Esa-Pekka several times - although the conversation ranged more towards Lem than Lucas.

In the rest of the article Ross talks of our acoustically fine concert hall and the exceptional orchestra which inhabits it, of the recently announced change in music directorship here and how the orchestra's administration has made miracles happen. Ross, always the optimist, concludes that Esa-Pekka's tenure in Los Angeles "may mark a turning point in the recent history of classical music in America." Wow, I hope I live long enough to find out if that's true.

In one bizarre episode Ross follows a Philharmonic cellist through a busy day - commuting on a motorcycle, teaching the Elgar concerto, and taking an improvisation lesson in Laurel Canyon from a teacher who tells him to "find the magic in the intervals". Yeah, dude, far out. Californians are like that. Got any papers?


But in the entire article this one sentence was most interesting to me:

Perhaps (LA Philharmonic President & Executive Director Deborah) Borda's boldest notion is to give visiting composers such as (John) Adams and Thomas Ades the same royal treatment that is extended to the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell; Borda talks about "hero composers."

Ah yes. The "composer as hero" syndrome. I thought that was just a concept that I had come up with years ago to explain away the Philharmonic's tunnel vision of new music marketing. Apparently they do it consciously. Of course they do. Conscious or not, it predates the Borda years.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to watch this phenomenon both from a distance and from up close. The first hero composers that I remember in L.A. were Pierre Boulez and Wittold Lutoslawski. Back then I was producing concerts of alternative new music (i.e. an alternative to what happened at the Phil.). I think I would have given several important body parts for a performance of my music by the Philharmonic.


In my first years in Los Angeles new music was never programmed on the second half of Philharmonic concerts because a large portion of the audience would simply leave at intermission. In the late '80s I remember overhearing two subscribers discuss their least-favorite recent new music performances (an awful Mel Powell piece won hands down.) Once in the 90s, after John Adams had given a pre-concert lecture, I overheard a woman say "He seems like a very genuine person." And indeed he is. But so was Mel.

I'm not saying our music heroes don't deserve attention. But I feel strongly that the world of creative music should not be an all or nothing, winner take all place. There must be hundreds of composers in the US with the talent , experience, ideas and motivation for the job of Hero, if it were only offered. For whatever reason, very few are chosen. All four that I can think of in LA have already been mentioned here.


Selling composers as heroes works not because they are treated like soloists, as Alex Ross suggests, but because they are treated more like the classical gods, your Beethovens and your Wagners. My sense is that nineteenth century music sustains general interest in all classical music in this country. As a result we treat living composers by the standards we use for nineteenth century composers. It's a very top down arrangement. I've never liked it.

About the time of the movie Amadeus (1984) I got myself into a spot of difficulty when a local free newspaper quoted me calling the then composer-in-residence of the Philharmonic "the Salieri of new music in Los Angeles." What got back to this person was that I was accusing him of murder. (After that I was more careful to be specific about which interview comments were on the record and which not. By the way, that very reviewer has since won a Pulitzer prize.)

Back then I stayed on good terms with the composer by writing a letter to the paper explaining what I meant: that the composer-in-residence had great influence on deciding whose music was heard "at court" By "at court" of course I meant "at the Philharmonic". Now, 20 years on, Amadeus is pretty much forgotten and I've learned my lesson about making analogies.


These days I just compare the Philharmonic to an 800-pound gorilla. The analogy "at court" still works, however, and I even get to attend once in a while. By either analogy the Philharmonic is the only really big player in the local new music scene. The nearest competitor in the same weight class is the San Francisco Symphony. I've noticed that East Coast people tend to think San Francisco is much closer to L.A. than it really is, not just in distance but also in culture. Los Angeles is spread out over a huge geography - but it's not that big.

Finally, once Alex Ross finished his New Yorker article he wrote this in his blog: "You L.A. people are lucky." Yeah, probably so. But I'd like to suggest that he withhold judgment until he spends some time here during the months of August and September. That's when the sun burns your skin and the smog burns your eyes and the programming with fireworks at the only live classical music venue in town burns your soul.


Sign up for a free weekly New Yorker cartoon email here.

Paul Viapiano, also a Pasadena blogger, has this recent article about reading The New Yorker.

A previous Mixed Meters post - Los Angeles, New Music Backwater

Eustace Tilley Tags: The New Yorker. . . Esa-Pekka Salonen. . . Alex Ross. . . Los Angeles Philharmonic. . . new+music. . . composers. . . heroes. . . hero composers. . . John Adams. . . Thomas Ades. . . Pierre Boulez. . . Wittold Lutoslawski

30 Second Spots: Bill Kraft's San Francisco Waltz Toon

Two weeks ago I traveled to San Francisco to hear 2 performances of A Flowering Tree, the newest opera by John Adams. I feel some pressure to write a few words about the piece soon, before John premiers his next opera.

In short, A Flowering Tree is about a man who is turned on by a woman changing herself into a tree. The plot comes from a South Indian fable and, according to John & director Peter Sellars the opera was inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute. A Flowering Tree is a beautiful love story. (Click here to read about some of the ways humans are aroused by non-operatic non-Adamsian transformations.)

Here's a picture of the composer, director, choral conductor and entire cast of singers and dancers (3 each) acknowledging the excellent performance by the San Francisco Symphony. I liked the way one dancer and one singer combined to portray a single character and also the simple but dramatic lighting effects. This is called "reduced staging"; it was very effective.


The orchestra music of A Flowering Tree is indeed quite magical. John has discovered some new avenues of orchestra sound to explore. And I marvel how well he can control musical pacing over more than two hours . As someone who struggles with music that lasts only a few minutes I wonder more and more how it's possible to construct such long pieces - and to get audiences to sit still throughout.

I spoke with John after both performances and, pretty much, the above is what I told him. Here's a picture of the entertainment, largely ignored, at the post-concert party.



I guess Indian music reflected the Indian origins of the story. I had an interesting conversation with Mike the sarod player. To the left of the tabla player you can see a brown, vaguely plaid, mass. That is the sport coat of the composer himself. Note the birthday cake for him between the two chairs.

The main backstage hallway at Davies Symphony Hall is adorned with row upon row of autographed headshots of famous celebrities who have performed with the San Francisco Symphony. I couldn't resist snapping evidence of a reunion between Star War's John Williams with Tutti Frutti's Little Richard.


If you're wondering why I took the time to make this trip - since I'm neither a fan of opera or even of live performance - it's because I've been copying music for John Adams since 1985. Getting out of my little cave and hearing a whole completed work of music helps me keep some perspective on the purpose of my own small involvement.

Meanwhile I spent my time wandering around in San Francisco's Civic Center - snapping pictures and marveling at being in a real city. This is part of a metal fence outside War Memorial Opera House, kind of an Art Deco Mandala or maybe a shield for a supernumerary spear chucker.


Most of the architecture in that part of San Francisco is large blocks of stony permanence adorned with guilty gilt trips and ostentation - the sort of thing intended to remind people that they are doing important work.

But my eye was more fascinated by the nearby headquarters of the AAA where architectural conformity must be a serious human burden. This 50's-ugly office building has a color somewhere between oxidized copper and travel-sickness vomit.

In the finest Mixed Meters tradition, here is a picture of a blank wall desecrated only by the AAA corporate logo mandala in starkly contrasting red and blue.



Several weeks before this trip I had doodled a melody - just 7 notes - on Bill Kraft's piano. He asked "What's that?" and I replied "I don't know, I just made it up." For some reason I didn't forget it and used it as the seed for this 30 Second Spot, constructed mostly in a San Francisco Starbucks.

click here to hear Bill Kraft's San Francisco Waltz Toon It's vaguely waltz-like, not cartoonish at all and even, uncharacteristically, somewhat somber. Or maybe the right word is "empty." I doubt Bill will ever dance to it.

Here's a biography of William Kraft - I've been working for him even longer than I have for John Adams.

Copyright (c) March, 2007 by David Ocker - 80 seconds

Explanation of 30 second spots

Other Mixed Meters Blank Wall posts: click on the blanks blank wall or blank wall or blank wall or blank wall or blank wall.

Flowering Tags: A Flowering Tree. . . John Adams. . . opera. . . Peter Sellars. . . San Francisco Symphony. . . architecture. . . William Kraft. . . Bill Kraft. . . 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker

Blow Up

Can you find me in this picture? It appears on The Rest Is Noise - the blog of Alex Ross, New Yorker Music Critic. You can see my hairline, pony tail and not much else dead center in this photo. Below you can see the blow up I did to prove I'm not making this up.




What Ross was doing in Santa Monica last Thursday is probably a better story than what I was doing there. Alex Shapiro was sitting in front of me. Barry Gremillion was sitting to my left.

For hairline comparison purposes, here's a similarly obscured picture of me taken by Leslie at the Huntington's fabulous Desert Garden here in Pasadena two days later. John Adams has told me several times that there is no reason to leave Pasadena. He's right, of course. I've wondered if he's just a little jealous.


Here's a lucky shot I took of a hummingbird at the Huntington that day. Can you find the hummingbird? Leslie says it's either a Rufous or an Allen's Hummingbird. The blow up is below.




For more about how I musically avoided Alex Shapiro, click here.

Helix Tags: Alex Ross. . . Alex Shapiro. . . Barry Gremillion. . . hummingbirds. . . Huntington Gardens