Some Current Trends in Contemporary Classical Music: An Improviser’s Guide

Thanks for this very informative post. Being outside of the academy and without access to academic journals it’s difficult to find out what’s going on with contemporary classical.

This is a valuable post and Steve’s examples are all extremely well-chosen. I’d be lying if I said that either spectral music or the “new complexity” were close to my heart, but the selections here all have something to offer, and are really excellent introductions to the work of these composers.

That said, I feel I should maybe comment on what paralleliott said:

Being outside of the academy and without access to academic journals it’s difficult to find out what’s going on with contemporary classical.

There is a shit-ton of “contemporary classical” music that happens outside the academy. Lots of it is really good and really vital, and the scene is tremendously diverse. I’d really hate for anyone to walk away with the impression that recently composed music never escapes the ivory tower.

Interested listeners could do worse than to check in with Kyle Gann’s blog from time to time. Or, not to get too incestuous, but there’s quite a lot of recent music by young (primarily NYC-based, primarily nonacademic) composers available for streaming from the New Amsterdam site. Plus, you know, Anti-Social Music, ICE, the MATA festival, etc.

It’s a blessing that a lot of that abstract “headache”-music does NOT leave the ivory tower because that’s where it belongs … Most of it is just a bad recycling of the old avant-garde, but not all of it. What’s pretty amazing is the amount of money that flows in the direction of 2nd- or 3rd-class new music composers – I recently talked to a Swiss jazz musicians who participated in a new music project and compared to the gigs with his own groups he earned a shitload of money even if almost nobody came to the concerts (maybe the listeners were taken hostage in an ivory tower???) … cheers!

This is a wonderful piece and a great place to find it. From the bits I already know of, this is extremely well considered (though I’d have to suggest 4 chants pour franchir le seuil by Grisey). I’m way off being an academic or even a musician but hey, if you can’t track stuff down on the internet, are you really trying? New Coco’s a good place to start.

@Tom: “that abstract head-ache music” – isn’t that one of those tired put-downs that get said about so much of ‘our’ stuff usually? In re CT and the like, for instance? I repeat my question: are you really trying?!!

Connecting to various comments referencing The Academy, The Ivory Tour, and Institutional Support, I wanted to share a (slightly edited) reflection on these topics that I originally posted as part of a comment thread on Nate Chinen’s Blog — his original post was entitled “Grant Me This.” My original post also happens to allude to another saxophonist’s affinity for French proto-spectral music, as composed by Edgar Varese…!

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Originally Posted on 7/26/2009

Following this discussion I can’t help but think that there may be an even larger point lurking at the crux of the issues raised by Nate’s original post–specifically that of jazz’s relationship to massive infrastructure and financial resource more generally.

Part of what’s so amazing about jazz is that it can produce such incredibly rich and meaningful music with virtually zero infrastructure. But in many ways, that aspect of the music has actually been used as a tool, over the past 100 years or so, to limit and restrict the possibilities of the medium/milieu and to define it; often in unnatural ways.

Taking even a cursory glance at the history of this music, there seems to be an abundance of evidence in support of Miles Okazaki’s suggestion that jazz has always been highly conceptual, whether or not it was consistently articulated as such. And perhaps even more to the point, the very core of the most conservatively sanctioned canon of this music is full of examples of performer/composers who have taken great pains to expand the nature of the arts-based infrastructures made available to them; usually with very limited success.

There is the example of Scott Joplin’s inability to have his operatic works performed at a high level during his lifetime. Charlie Parker’s articulation of his desire to compose music for larger/orchestral forces and Edgar Varese’s refusal to accept Parker as one of his composition students. Jackie McLean’s discussion in the documentary “Jackie McLean On Mars” of his decision and the decision made by many of his peers (Max Roach, Yusef Lateef, Horace Tapscott, etc.) to move into academia, based, in part, on a desire to “perpetuate some concepts from another vantage point than always just on the bandstand.” Or Anthony Braxton’s remark regarding the re-release of his Composition 82 for 4 Orchestras: “Can you imagine anyone now giving a Black composer the money to perform and record a piece for 4 orchestras? Or one orchestra for that matter? 40 musicians?”

I realize that these comments bring up a collection of issues that may seem peripheral to the core of this very valuable and useful thread. But, for me, they point to jazz’s very rich and lengthy history of (attempted) engagement with massive arts-based infrastructure — in most cases involving the music’s most seminal practitioners.

Tom G: I can definitely relate to where you’re coming from. In terms of physicality and highly visceral music-making, I would recommend Michael Finnissy’s piano music — the recording of English Country Tunes, in particular, provides a really powerful example of Finnissy performing his own music.

In terms of music that deals with a pretty compelling rhythmic logic, I would suggest Grisey’s Vortex Temporum.

I agree that the music of people like Bud Powell and Charlie Parker is a seemingly endless revelation. Then again, Parker, seems to have felt the same way about Bartok, Stravinsky, and Varese, based on his recorded interviews. And I can only imagine what it must have taken to get his brain dancing…!

Great conversation.

First, we have the issue of jazz, its infrastructure, and its (lack of) interfacing with cultural power structures. Of course a connection to racism, institutional and personal, has been brought up. No way of getting around this. This relates to the question of just what IS the difference between jazz and other American art music (what we call Classical music I guess). I think one thing it comes down to is whether the music derives on some level from an African/African-American tradition. So, we have music of some sort of African descent getting essentially shut out of the economic artistic structure in the US (such as it is), while music that descends from some kind of European lineage successfully keeps its hands on the checkbook. Pretty familiar story.

Next come the aesthetic questions raised by the “headache music” vs. “dancing in your head” thing. I guess I tend to have not so much sympathy with music that gives me a headache. But music that gives me a headache doesn’t always seem to give others one. And music that makes my neurons jump around seems to bore some others to tears. So, hmmm. What to do with this one?

At any rate, the whole idea of an avant-garde kind of cracks me up. Just try to find something new. I guarantee you someone can find someone else who already thought of and did it. A LONG time ago.

I think It’s important to tread carefully here in this sort of conversation, as the expansion of what is being spoken of might lose sight of the discussion’s initial important focus. Steve’s essay and also George Lewis”s modernism boot camp initiative idea are extremely vital , especially now when dissemination about this art form has become so internet centric, and in some ways, in my observation, is creating it’s own culture of artistic “shut out” as far as race, gender and class are concerned. As a graduate of two american university arts programs as well as being a person that gives workshops or sits on panels at some of these institutions from time to time , it makes me excited to think that the 21st century student interested in improvisation coming from the tenets of the American Jazz tradition will no longer give me blank stares if I bring up the names of people like Tristan Murail, George Lewis, Tanya Leon for instance.

At the same time I think the discussion of “gut level” factors and historical jazz infrastructure as seen in America and it’s influence beyond v.s what the(?) avant-garde is within this scope, demand a larger excavation for real far reaching discussion. Not so much for the music sadly but for the way in which the boxed in idea of what constitutes jazz, or the aura of the jazz musician is informing the listeners opinion of what is or what isn’t avant, or what is or what isn’t jazz?

All art regardless of its creative endpoint, is a recycled/ D.I.Y. effort in it’s most graceful and imaginative form of what came before. It has been my experience thus far that ideas of African American experimentalists across artistic genres are lumped into a framework of “avantness” because the profiles no longer fit the societal idea of what can be historically understood or interpreted. And also because it’s these institutions that have offered the African American experimentalist some peace to actually explore and not be pushed into some of these tired corners of societal bore. As far as music is concerned, I’m also not so certain the the euro classical new music traditions of the last fifty years or so, are as accepting of this expansion, but at the same time at least there is room that in many ways that historically speaking, the American jazz tradition has ignored or undervalued.

I, of course, can’t really offer a complete unbiased opinion on all of this since in many ways I am very much in the middle of all of it in real time.

This is great discussion though, and I really hope it continues to carry on.

Avant-garde jazz/new music trolls, who knew?!

I would really urge eschewing clichéd reactions, not fighting straw-men, and concentrating on real issues and problems. Don’t let the man keep you down by distracting you with the usual nonsense:

First, jazz is in the American academies as surely as classical music, it’s hand is just as much in the kitty as this imagined quantity of ‘music that descends from some kind of European lineage.’ Some one name one major music school in America that does NOT teach, produce and institutionally support jazz.

Second, jazz is a mongrel, like the rest of truly American culture. It was created primarily, but not solely, by African-Americans who were specifically responding to and incorporating “European lineage.” Spanish songs, French dance music and John Phillip Sousa were essential to the creation of jazz. Don’t take my word for it, take Jelly Roll Morton’s, or listen to Henry Threadgill’s records. Leave the identity politics to the Republicans and, yes, the academics.

Third, if you’ve never read Virgil Thomson’s essay ‘How Composers Eat, or Who Does What to Whom and Who Gets Paid,” I’d recommend it. This discussion is a real luxury that many composers and musicians don’t have. They need to both make their art and to survive. For many, that means the academy – not everyone enjoys the accident of birth of Eliot Carter, nor is the balance that Ives and Wallace Stevens maintained possible for most. The music that artists in an out of the academy make succeeds or fails on its own terms, and each place is susceptible to the same danger: conformity. “Schools of thought” and “styles” are great for exploring new ideas, but they can also become a trap of solipsism. A method is not a substitute for a genre, using only Spectral means will inevitably lead to a dead-end. Even Reich and Glass modified their styles and John Adams made the leap to incorporate Process as a means to achieve Resolution. What is so interesting in Steve’s post is the connection with his thoughts and his music. Take his three discs on Pi – they are all different, all show the development of ideas and incorporation of new concepts, but are all clearly his own individual work. And he’s an academic! The streets are not immune to this, one of the problems that is already developing with the growing incorporation of pop music and new classical music is that already a lot of stuff is sounding the same. And there’s no academy forcing that to happen. Where ever there are groups gathering around a certain idea, there is a trend towards homogenization, it’s hard to resist but should be resisted.

And last, there’s plenty of new ideas out there that no one else thought of a long time ago. Steve hints at one in particular, the looped based structures of Furrer and especially Bernhard Lang, who is doing extremely fresh, exciting stuff, and there’s also a vast unexplored are of the dimension of time in music. It’s too new to have a clear direction, but you can hear it in Steve’s work and also on the new Alarm Will Sound CD. The door to that has not yet been opened, but it’s been cracked.

Definitely a lot to discuss and expand on. And doing my best to heed Matana’s advice, I’ll try and touch on some of the points that everyone brings up in an effort to connect them to my original/primary aim of sharing information about some current trends in European Modernism.

Brian and George both touched on the role of institutional support in creative music and I’d like to add to that perspective as it pertains to my original post. To begin with, when looking at what music is derived from African-American traditions and what music is the result of a so-called mongrelization, it seems that perception and successful self-fashioning may be more important than reality. Scott Joplin and Anthony Braxton’s affinity for operatic forms do not seem to have provided them with open access to the traditional infrastructure of Western European art music. And the very powerful influence of pan-African musical forms on the music of John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson, among others, does not seem to have placed them in any kind of economic ghetto, as far as institutional support is concerned. A very deep hybridity may well be fundamental to all histories of creative music, once culturally-nationalist and politically skewed attempts to construct a narrative of aesthetic purity have been made transparent.

And as Matana suggests in her post, DIY strategies and methodologies may also be a fundamental axiom of creativity — whether it’s something that is openly discussed or not. Of the 5 composers I chose to highlight in my original post, at least 4 of them succeeded in gaining international recognition for their work through their own efforts as performers and/or ensemble directors — Furrer formed Klangforum Wien; Finnissy presented the original performances of his piano music; Grisey and Murail formed l’Itineraire Ensemble in the 1970s and performed their own electro-acoustic works. And of course the DIY ensembles led by Steve Reich and Philip Glass are widely known (and as suggested earlier, indebted, I believe, to earlier models presented by Gottschalk, Joplin, and Parker, among others).

A great deal of reevaluation seems to be necessary in order to move beyond, what Matana succinctly referred to as, a “boxed in” conception of jazz (or any creative music for that matter). Part of the project of a Modernism Boot Camp and of sharing information like this in the context of a BLOG post is to help expand the notion of what jazz can be and what the creative music community can imagine for itself. And for the time being this remains a re-imagination that is happening in spite of an overwhelming dearth of significant institutional resources and support — George’s comment about “the kitty” not withstanding.

Hi,

If you’ll forgive my naivete–I know very little about music theory–I’m wondering if Angelo Badalamenti figures in at all in the pantheon of “spectral” composers. I couldn’t help but think of his work on Twin Peaks as I listened to Grisey. It’s obvious Badalamenti’s work is far less adventurous on a theoretical level, but he did seem to incorporate similar moods into his realization of Lynchian Americana.

(And since this is a jazz blog, I’ll just mention that Grady Tate’s brush work on those Twin Peaks soundtracks is sublime.)

Sorry for the typos. Meant:

“…any affiliation…” and “…hear too much…”

The core of my view is that Steve’s post represents his musical thinking, open-minded, exploratory and completely non-judgmental in terms of where ideas come from, whether IRCAM or IDM. The latter is the academy (where a hell of a lot of important and influential experimentation has taken place) and the latter is the street and a pretty good example of DIY.

Jazz and classical music in America have a cult following, and the new and experimental side of each a sub-cult. No one is going to get rich, or even make a living, doing this music. Musicians need to eat, so if they get jobs in the academy, like Braxton has, good for them. I think a full stomach is just as conducive to creativity as starvation.

Jazz and new music are not enemies, no matter what some people feel. Jazz, yes in the academy, has helped revive the tradition of improvisation in classical music, and it has learned a great deal from classical music about how to structure stuff beyond head-solo-head blues or Rhythm Changes. These are all good things.

Be opened minded, don’t resent other people’s success and most of all be a free fucking agent. Music is not the enemy of other music. Yeah, resources are tight. Cecil Taylor washed dishes and Philip Glass drove a cab, and now neither one has to. Joseph Jarman learned valuable survival skills in the Army, Conlon Nancarrow left for Mexico and Harry Partch rode boxcars. That any of them might have ever, eventually gotten some money or performance at a University, College or Conservatory is a good thing. Remember that facts, and what they indicate, matter, and the fact is that the academy rejected Eliot Carter for longer than it did Anthony Braxton (an unfair measure, I know, since Carter was born in 1908) – the point is that rigid, stultifying group think is the fundamental enemy of creative music of ALL kinds, and there’s too much of a whiff of it here for my comfort.

Happy Festivus! Welcome, new comers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!