Composer/keyboardist/producer Elodie Lauten creates operas, music for dance and theatre, orchestral, chamber and instrumental music. Not a household name, she is however widely recognized by historians as a leading figure of post-minimalism and a force on the new music scene, with 20 releases on a number of labels.
Her opera Waking in New York, Portrait of Allen Ginsberg was presented by the New York City Opera (2004 VOX and Friends) in May 2004, after being released on 4Tay, following three well-received productions. OrfReo, a new opera for Baroque ensemble was premiered at Merkin Hall by the Queen's Chamber Band, whose New Music Alive CD (released on Capstone in 2004) includes Lauten's The Architect. The Orfreo CD was released in December 2004 on Studio 21. In September 2004 Lauten was composer-in-residence at Hope College, MI. Lauten's Symphony 2001, was premiered in February 2003 by the SEM Orchestra in New York. In 1999, Lauten's Deus ex Machina Cycle for voices and Baroque ensemble (4Tay) received strong critical acclaim in the US and Europe. Lauten's Variations On The Orange Cycle (Lovely Music, 1998) was included in Chamber Music America's list of 100 best works of the 20th century.
Born in Paris, France, she was classically trained as a pianist since age 7. She received a Master's in composition from New York University where she studied Western composition with Dinu Ghezzo and Indian classical music with Ahkmal Parwez. Daughter of jazz pianist/drummer Errol Parker, she is also a fluent improviser. She became an American citizen in 1984 and has lived in New York since the early seventies
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Monday, June 13, 2005
Passion or prejudice
To most non-musicians, the activity of composing is largely misunderstood. I sometimes hesitate to even mention I am a composer to certain people. For most, the word composer spells Beethoven (well actually, not everyone even knows Beethoven, like a 7-year old I knew who thought Beethoven was a dog).
I never thought of myself as a composer until Greg Sandow said so in the Village Voice in 1983. I thought I was making music, and I still think that way. Composing is more like thinking music as opposed to making music, but there is a grey area somewhere.
If you say you are a composer, people expect you to be some household name, and if you’re not, they just don’t understand. Some people I am being introduced to, after three sentences, have the nerve to ask how many CDs I sell. No one would think of asking a total stranger, “and by the way, how much income did you declare on your last income tax?” They do that because they have no clue as to how to relate to a living composer. I have heard the phrase “It’s a passion!” many times even from a shrink, who would supposedly be able to understand the difference, but just couldn’t.
Isn’t a passion more like a hobby of sorts, a passion for golf, for butterflies, for the great outdoors – but music is not a passion… unless it is meant as something like The Passion of Christ, etymologically speaking - something painful that one is subjected to. But I don’t think that’s what most people mean when they say passion. “You enjoy what you are doing”. A lot of people who work ordinary jobs then don’t really enjoy naively imagine that creators enjoy their work. Sometimes I try to explain that a lot of what is involved in composing is not all fun, like inputting notes in Finale for hours, attending to rehearsal arguments or productions from hell that make you think never to do this again. Composing can be painful, it can bring on anxiety, it can take over your life, it is, as they said in the sixties, a ‘trip’, but not a passion. Again, there is a difference between pleasure and happiness. Some people seek pleasure, but that fulfillment does not necessarily bring happiness or peace of mind along with it.
Along the lines of pleasure, this brings me to the question as to what is actually a good time. Do you enjoy having a good time? Without being a masochist, a so-called good time such as vacation or party is not always enjoyable. When I was growing up, going on vacation was a dread as I was separated from my piano for an extended period.
I asked the question to Barry Drogin. These are his comments.
“The semiotics of pleasure are definitely in the forefront of my consciousness lately. When I am "in the zone," I experience satisfaction, some kind of thrill, during the act of composition, when I think I've found a solution to a musical problem, or if the beauty of the music itself pleases me. But it can be torture if I'm blocked, or if I think I've spent too much time on the wrong path. Not to give away the subject matter of my book by going too deeply, but consider also Kyle Gann's "No more guilty pleasures" at http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_gann13.html
(although in that case he was writing about letting in other stylistic influences, what he calls totalism.)
I guess, to go to an extreme, the question might be: If a masochist only has a good time when he/she is having a bad time, is he/she actually having a good time or a bad time? Or what of people conditioned to feel guilty about having a good time? Do they enjoy the good time in the present tense but not in the past tense?
I think the point of my answer is that human experience is complex, and although an individual's experience might be universalized, it doesn't mean that another individual having the exact opposite experience is not common and cannot be universalized as well. Makes life for a contrarian like me so easy: anyone says A, I have no problem saying not A, both A and not A are typically true. Say not A, I have no problem going back and defending A. More from Barry Drogin at http://www.notnicemusic.com/proposal.html
posted by Elodie Lauten
1:58 PM
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