Archive for category Videos
Wandering in the Wilderness Vol. 3: Totalism
I suppose I should begin this blog entry by apologizing for my absence. It has been a while since my last post on the Hand, partially because I was caught up in the academic doldrums of the summer, and partially because I was launching my new video blog, The Brazen Drum. While the video blog is my shiny new toy, I plan to continue blogging here as well because: a) I enjoy writing, and b) I see these two mediums as serving different (yet complimentary and possibly overlapping) purposes.
Well, now that that’s out of the way, let’s go wandering in the wilderness again and explore another topic in new music: Totalism. While sometimes used in political terms as a synonym for totalitarianism, totalism in music refers to a specific branch of post-minimalist music which developed in the 1990s. Indeed, while I was listening to Pearl Jam (Vs. is by far their best album, don’t try to argue with me) and scouring the local Goodwill for the perfect flannel shirt, a group of young composers in New York were developing their own brand of post-minimalist music.
The “total” in totalism (as noted by Kyle Gann) does not refer to the music itself, but to the intended audience. The driving force behind totalism is pairing an accessible surface (usually through familiar harmonies or rhythmic activity), which the casual listener is able to grasp, with a deeper structural complexity, which reveals itself to the more sophisticated listener. If I may offer a metaphor, consider the ocean. The surface of the ocean, vast and beautiful, is accessible to any viewer. Occasionally, marine life near the surface give glimpses of what is beneath. To the well-equipped, however, there is a depth and complexity which we are only beginning to explore with modern submarines and diving apparatus.
While it’s not an essential trait of the genre, totalist composers often draw on rock and pop music influences. While the surface harmony is often accessible to the casual listener, these pieces are generally more harmonically adventurous than traditional minimalist music.
Now, a few representative examples:
“Sun Dance” from “Custer and Sitting Bull” by Kyle Gann
This excerpt is from Kyle Gann’s musical drama, “Custer and Sitting Bull.” Gann is, among other things, a microtonal composer. In lay terms, this means he uses intervals small than a half step (the smallest on tonal music). This accounts for the “out-of-tune,” disorienting surface harmonies.
Please pardon the self-promotion, but this example, taken from my last recital at MSU, features a piece by totalist composer Joseph Waters. This piece is based on rhythms taken from Cuban Santeria rituals. This piece exhibits and exciting, accessible surface, but is structurally complex in it’s use and development of rhythmic motives. There are often several layers of the same rhythm, played at different tempi.
I wanted to include this piece because Maya Beiser is a bad-ass cellist, and because Michael Gordon is a major player in the totalism scene. Note how the video in the background can represent a metaphor for totalism: a very active surface, but with a complexity that eludes the viewer.
Finally, this beautiful piece by John Luther Adams. The active surface of this piece is provided by the piano and percussion, while the strings and winds play complex, slowly developing harmonies. Many people believe that Adams’ sparse, sprawling textures evoke the barren plains of Alaska where he currently lives and works.
This concludes this foray into the wilderness of totalism. I leave you with a few questions. Which of these pieces did you enjoy? Which did you dislike? Why?
For further reading, checkout this excellent article by Kyle Gann.
Until next time, keep wandering…
Premieres of New Music…right here!
Normally, we don’t advertise individual concerts much here on Guidonian Hand. You, dear reader, could be anywhere when you’re reading this…well, maybe not anywhere. I’d say there are at least…four…no, five different places you could be right now. Anyway, we don’t mention these events because the chances are not good that you’re going to be near enough to stop by. Now, if you are capable of reading this sentence, you are capable of seeing a live performance of new music.
That’s right, tune in here on the blog, or over at UStream.tv for a live webcast of Premieres of New Music by Michigan State composers at 7:30pm EST tonight (Tues., 20 Oct, 2009). No signing up or logging in required either here or at Ustream!
We’d also love your feedback here in the MSU Composition Channel Chat, or on in the comments field on our UStream.tv page
Enjoy!
(NOTE: To watch the webcast, you’ll have to load this page AFTER we’ve started broadcasting. If it’s getting close to showtime, and you don’t see anything, try clicking your browser’s “refresh” button.)
Better Know a Sequenza (part 3)
In an effort to share the music of Luciano Berio with the world, we here at the Guidonian Hand bring you part two of our fourteen-part series, Better Know a Sequenza.
In this installment: My personal favorite of the cycle, Sequenza VII for oboe, and it’s alternate for soprano saxophone. VII is special for a couple of reasons. First, it is one of the handful of “alternate” sequenzas in the collection. It was originally written for oboe, but do to the nature of oboe literature (and the nature of oboists–ZING!), it’s more frequently performed on soprano saxophone as Sequenza VIIb. Additionally, VII is one of only two sequenzas (along with X for trumpet) that has a second “part.” Berio asks for a drone to sound on any instrument (or voice) throughout the work on the pitch B.
I’ve seen the work performed a few times, and I’ve heard of the drone being produced any number of ways: a digital tuner, a pre-recorded loop of the soloist, a group of other players, and even asking the audience to hum the B. Humming the B sounds cool, but I think I’d get tired of it by the sixth or seventh minute of the piece.
YouTube offers us many complete recordings of some very impressive performances of VIIb, but only a few excerpts of VII. Saxophone friends have told me that they have heard that Berio himself grew to prefer the piece played on soprano saxophone. However, in doing research on the piece, I was not able to corroborate this. Personally, I prefer it on oboe. Here are a few Sequenza VII videos.
First, we bring you the incomparable Alex Klein, principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. You can hear the audience humming in this one.
This next video features another excerpt from the beginning section of the work. This time, the drone is being passed around a group of oboists.
Berio’s use of the drone is one of the things that first draws the listener in at the beginning of the piece. The soloist begins with a sharp, short B, and the audience initially hears the drone as an ethereal reverberation. The next half-minute or so is controlled by the soloist playing the same B with different fingerings to get slightly different timbres and tunings, and the drone is thoughtfully provided as a reference point to compare each new sound as it is introduced. Throughout most of the piece (leading up to the climax, near the “golden section”), the range of the oboe is gradually expanding in both directions from that B. The ending of the piece features some instrumental calisthenics and some timbral heroics, thanks to some really cool multiphonics. I like the bright, piercing quality of the oboe multiphonics, but the equally harsh, fuller-sounding multiphonics on the soprano saxophone are nice, too.
In conclusion we bring you a very thoughtful and enthusiastic performance of Sequenza VIIb played by Taimur Sullivan. Also, this one is the whole work, so you get to luxuriate in Berio’s formal design.
Guido, let’s put Sequenza VII up on the Big Board! The fightin’ VIIth!
Wandering in the Wilderness Vol. 2: The Sound of Silence
And the sign said,
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence”
- from “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel
In this installment of WitW, I would like to discuss the use of silence as a compositional tool. I don’t mean short, dramatic uses, such as the GP commonly found in classical music, but significant spans of time devoted to silence for compositional reasons. To this end, we will explore three distinct approaches to silence by three different 20th/21st centuryAmerican composers. Any discussion of silence as a compositional device, of course must begin with John Cage’s 4′33″.
4′33″ is the infamous piece of silent music, whose entire score consists of three movements of indeterminate length, each marked “tacet” (the movements are traditionally, but not necessarily, marked off by the performer in some way). For Cage, any sound was music. He is quoted as saying that he would rather listen to the sounds of traffic than to the symphonies of Beethoven (I’m paraphrasing from memory, although I’m pretty sure that’s the essence of it). 4′33”, therefore, is a framing device. It sets a certain boundary, and says, “anything within this boundary is art, pay attention to it.” Consider the following images:
"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp
Some urinals
Both images are of urinals. The first, however, is found in an art gallery, while the second image is from a public restroom. While both objects are essentially similar, the context, or the framing, of these objects significantly impacts the way we think about these objects. With the first, we may think of questions like “Is this really art?” or “If I pee in this, where would the pee go?” or “Would I get arrested if I tried to pee in it?” or “Why did I let Ty drag me to this modern art museum?” With the second, this is a context in which we (at least those of us who are male) are used to encountering urinals, and little thought is given to them (with the exception of special rules which apply to public urinals). Anyways, back to John Cage. The brilliance of 4′33″ as a framing device is that any sounds that arise during these boundaries are unintentional, the sounds that are normally blocked out or ignored during “normal” performances. It provides a new context for listeners to consider sounds which would normally be dismissed.
While a recording of 4′33″ is not necessary (one only needs a stopwatch to perform the piece in the comforts of one’s own home), I couldn’t resist linking to this performance, which I find particularly compelling.
Another interesting use of silence is found in the music of Morton Feldman. Feldman once said that the most beautiful thing a sound ever does is decay. In his works, the textures are often very sparse, so that you can appreciate the sound in its entirety, decay and all. Feldman’s counterpart in the visual art world is Mark Rothko, who uses simple designs to invite the viewer to appreciate the subtleties of color and texture in the works. For an example of Feldman’s use of silence, check out this recording of “The King of Denmark” for solo percussionist:
In “The king of Denmark,” the sparse textures isolate individual sounds and allow the listener to appreciate their qualities more fully than they might in a more dense musical situation.
The final composer I will discuss in this post is Thomas DeLio. In addition to being an influential composer, DeLio is also one of the foremost scholars in contemporary music, with a special interest in the music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Iannis Xenakis. The most striking characteristic of DeLio’s music is his use of long periods of silence. In a few of his pieces, the total duration of the silences is greater than the total duration of the musical material. The reason for this is that DeLio approaches silences functionally in a way that is fundamentally different from that of Cage or Feldman. For Cage, silence was a framing device to invite the unintended; for Feldman, it was a blank canvas on which individual sound colors are accented. DeLio’s use, however, is to frustrate the listener’s memory. The natural tendency of listeners is to process sounds by putting them in the context of sounds which proceed and follow them. This is a natural process, and most music relies on this contextualization to create coherent musical ideas. DeLio, however, attempts to isolate musical material by use of silences, so that each sound or gesture can be appreciated individually. The listener hears a gesture, followed by a long span of silence, and by the time the next gesture occurs, the listener has forgotton what the preceding gesture had sounded like. This music can seem strange and even unsettling to the casual listener; such long spans of silence are very uncommon in music, and create a certain amount of tension between the audience and performer. To give you an example of DeLio’s music, here is a performance of this author performing DeLio’s wave/s for solo percussionist:
This concludes my look at three different composers and how they use silence in unique ways. I hope you have found this interesting and that it gives you another point of view as you approach contemporary music. See you next time, when we’ll explore…something. I don’t have a topic picked out, and I am open to suggestions. Peace.
I’m not above shameless self promotion.
(alternative title: Better Know a Contemporary Percussion Artist)
Over the next few weeks, I am going to be releasing videos of my recital onto Youtube, one video at a time, once a week, until I am out of videos. My reasoning is that anytime someone I like posts six or seven new videos, I watch two or three before my ADD kicks in and I am drawn to some gem in the “related videos” window, and soon my whole afternoon has disappeared. This approach hopefully avoids some of that, by only asking the viewers to give me 10 mins. of time per week to check out my videos. I’m not sure if it will work, or how I would even know if it does work, but I think it’s worth a try.
Now, time to catch up those of you in the Guidoverse (Dave – I’m copywriting the word “Guidoverse.” Bam. That just happened.). I actually started this project last week, and intended to post something about it here, but for various reasons, not the least of which being the setting in of summer laziness, I am only now getting to it. I also really wanted to get to it yesterday so I could squeeze “youtubesday” into this post, but an unforeseen personal event (read: impromtu round of frisbee golf) prevented me from doing so. Regardless, I posted my second video today, so there are now two videos for you to check out. With no further ado, Recital video #1!:
Flame Head for percussion and electronics by Joseph Waters
Most of the rhythmic material in Flame Head is derived from Haitian ritual drumming. Like many Afro-Caribbean styles, Haitian drumming often uses ambiguous patterns which can be heard simultaneously in either 6/8 or 3/4 time signatures. The version in this video is for fixed audio on an mp3 track, but another version exists which uses a second performer who triggers samples in real time. I am hoping to perform this version sometime in the near future.
Recital Video #2:
Improvisado for solo marimba by José Luis Maúrtua
This is a piece I comissioned from Dr. Maúrtua with funding from the College of Music and the Graduate School at Michigan State University. This composition is based on Afro-Caribbean and South American dance rhythms. Overall, it is in a large scale ABA form, with the outer movements sharing a similar character and tempo. This form is reflected at a smaller level in the individual movements, which feature an exposition/digression/recapitulation form.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for new blog posts.
(updated 5/3/09: fixed link to second video)
Better Know a Sequenza (part 2)
In an effort to share the music of Luciano Berio with the world, we here at the Guidonian Hand bring you part two of our fourteen-part series, Better Know a Sequenza.
Sequenza III is for female voice. Singers, more so than instrumentalists, really engage music dramatically. I think this must be because they spend so much time studying opera roles and dramatic song cycles, but it really serves the sequenza well. Like the trombone sequenza, the voice sequenza is best experienced live or by video. The visual element is key. I don’t really know if performing Sequenza III is necessarily physical act, or if the work simply lends itself to physical interpretation, but you’ll never see anyone sing Handel the way they sing Berio. I recently sat down with Sequenza III on YouTube.
First, here’s Johanne Saunier’s performance. Someone has taken a lot of time to make the video really cool. It’s her singing, but a lot of it is slightly out of sync (at least I think it’s on purpose) and at a slightly weird speed.
Next, we bring you a video of a live performance by Marcia Taborda. The theatricality of this performance really sticks out (in a good way). Watch her face when she really gets going. Also, I dig the big chair and table set up from which she performs most of the piece. At the beginning she moves around the stage, and I wish she would do a bit more with this throughout the piece (though perhaps there’s an indication for this in the score).
Guido, let’s put Sequenza III up on the Big Board! The fightin’ IIIrd.
The Big Chart
I still remember learning about axioms in geometry class when I was a freshman in high school. Axioms are things that are so obviously true that they don’t require proof. I’m sure they are useful to mathematicians everywhere, but I don’t really like the idea of taking things for granted. It seems like a cop out. I think there are some architects at El Dorado, Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri that would agree with me. Generally, we accept as axiomatic that things that are as different as an apple and an orange (which are really not that different at all) are incomparable. We even have an English idiom based on the idea. The good people at El Dorado, Inc. think that you can compare not only apples and oranges, but really any two things that your mind has the capacity to consider.
They put together this humorous video called “The Big Chart.” The Big Chart is a organizational device that the Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America (C.I.C.I.N.A.) uses to compare things. Which is better: apples or oranges? seahorses or English people? C.I.C.I.N.A. and the Big Chart have the answer. The video is an elaborate and hilarious joke, but they take their counter-intuitive comparison seriously at El Dorado, Inc.
They like to compare their projects, mostly buildings, with things that seem to have little in common with buildings, like comparing a barn to a camel, or a parking structure to a Def Leppard album. In another video on the El Dorado, Inc. website, the architects discuss their methods of counter-intuitive comparison that they seem to consider a serious (if slightly silly) part of their work. The outcome is not important (usually their projects lose). What is important is the process of deliberation. By comparing a barn and a camel, one determines criteria for comparison, and in doing so, is forced to think about the barn and the camel differently. They both store things. the barn can store more, but the camel’s storage is mobile and can be converted into energy. With the help of another camel, the camel can reproduce and make more camels; the barn cannot make more barns. By thinking about barns and other buildings in new ways, the architects and designers at El Dorado, Inc. expand their creative vocabulary.
The Big Chart is here.
The other (long) video about using the counter-intuitive comparison process on El Dorado’s projects is here.
Better Know a Sequenza (part 1)
In an effort to share the music of Luciano Berio with the world, we here at the Guidonian Hand bring you part one of our fourteen-part series, Better Know a Sequenza.
The Sequenzas are a set of fourteen pieces for solo instrument written over the course of the last 40-50 years by Italian composer Luciano Berio. Many have become staples of the instrumental repertoire. They are as challenging as they are rewarding, both to performers and audiences. I recently sat down with Sequenza V for solo trombone.
[transript]
Dave MacDonald: Good afternoon, Sequenza V, and thank you for meeting with me.
Sequenza V: Ciao.
DM: Mr. Sequenza, some people have accused you of being excessively silly. How do you respond to that?
V: Ciao.
DM: Ok. I’ll let you have the last word.
V: Ciao.
DM: Thank you very much, Mr. Sequenza. It’s been a pleasure.
[end transcript]
Guido, let’s put Sequenza V up on the Big Board! The fightin’ Vth.
Wandering in the Wilderness Vol 1: The Shepherd Scale
I began last Saturday with the best of intentions, hoping to enjoy a cup of coffee and finish my readings for my Schenker class. Something in the readings, however, prompted me to think about the Golden Ratio, which led me on a series of rabbit trails all over Wikipedia and Youtube. Through these rabbit trails I learned of something called the Shepherd Scale. The Shepherd scale is a sort of aural illusion. It’s actually several identical scales, stacked in octaves, which ascend or descend over a certain range, and then repeat. In most applications, the scales are tapered in volume at both ends, so that entrances and exits of individual voices are not percieved (for a more detailed description, read here). The illusion is that the combined effect of these scales is percieved as a constant glissando.
First, a bare bones example (for a real trip, replay the video immediately after watching it to hear it continue to ascend, it will mess you up!):
Now a few practical applications. First James Tenney’s “For Ann (rising)”:
James Tenney: “For Ann (rising)”
Another great example is Beatsystem’s “Endlessly Downward” (while it sounds like a continuous glissando, it is actually an 11 second loop):
Beatsystem: “Endlessly Downward”
Finally, here is some music used for the “infinite stairs” in Super Mario 64:
These, of course, are fairly obvious examples, but there are certainly many more subtle musical possibilities in this concept. I’m sure there are many more examples out there already, but I’ll leave you to explore those on your own.
Technology and Culture
Igor and I have been posting recently about language and culture. No current discussion of either of these could be complete without mention of the effect of technology, and it seems even more appropriate to the discussion because we’ve all been having this conversation on this blog. Here at the Guidonian Hand offices, we value the input of others, which is why we encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments. It’s also why I’d like to share this video with you. (Also, I like it.)
Michael Wesch is an anthropologist at Kansas State University. One his areas of expertise is internet culture, and specifically YouTube culture. Not only is he a very gifted professor (He was named National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.), but he’s also creatively talented. Here’s a video he created about the the “modern” internet, or Web 2.0 as it is sometimes called, and its effect on the way we receive and interact with information. This video is called “The Machine is Us/ing Us”:
Here is another video he’s posted on YouTube. Not a creative venture, this is a recording of a presentation he’s giving at anthropology conference. He is presenting his research on YouTube culture the same way he might present his experience on more traditional anthropological subjects:
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