This week, composer David Smooke (faculty, Peabody Conservatory) will be visiting Westminster Choir College on Thursday to talk about his music. In addition to his work as a composer, Smooke is active as an avant improviser, employing a somewhat unlikely instrument: the toy piano.
Here he is in a video excerpt of a recent trio outing with Bonnie Lander and Erik Spangler at the Highwire Gallery in Philadelphia.
Magnus Lindberg’s important early opus Kraft received its long-belated NY premiere this past week. While the requirements for the piece itself – a large orchestra, massive percussion section, antiphonal spatializing, electronics, amplification, and several soloists – are daunting enough to make the piece a logistically challenging one to present, Lindberg goes still further to personalize its requirements. He stipulates that the percussion section use found materials from a local junkyard in their performance of the work, thereby locating each performance and making it a site-specific entity.
Here’s a video of the NYPO’s percussionists going on a scavenger hunt with Lindberg in preparation for the NY performances of Kraft.
This type of piece personalization makes each orchestra’s rendering of the work a unique experience; but it’s also curtailed the number of organizations who have, to date, presented Kraft.
Kraft, and other pieces with daunting requirements, raise certain aesthetic questions for composers. Is it important for each performance of a new piece to have a sense of personalization? Should composers strive to think big, even if it means that they’ll get less performances as a result? Or is a more portable and utilitarian view preferable?
Of course, one can make strong a case for both options and many variations in between. Lindberg himself has composed works which are far more easily programmed than Kraft!
But the piece does throw down a gauntlet. Composers: are you willing to wait years for performances of your music if that’s what making highly personal work requires? Or do you prefer getting your music out into the world right away and thus favor more practical solutions?
The estimable David Smooke posted a new column over at New Music Box yesterday. He dealt with one of the most imposing challenges facing composers today, especially at the early and middle stages of their careers: being hemmed in by requests for stylistic categorization.
“What does your music sound like?”
It seems like an innocent enough question, and from the questioner’s perspective it may indeed be a simple attempt at conversation or an opening gambit in the larger conversation of locating a composer’s aesthetic. But to the composer on the receiving end of this query, it can be a loaded one. Nobody who writes music likes to be pinned down as sounding like a particular sound byte or in a distinct genre or, heaven forbid, exactly like another composer. To borrow a curious and odious term in common parlance, nobody likes being “pigeonholed.”
When I interviewed John Wolf Brennan some years ago, he said, “Who’d want to be pinned down in a stylistic pigeonhole? Pigeonholes are such dark and claustrophobic places.”
The “ism” craze – postmodernism neoromanticism, totalism, postminimalism, etc. ad nauseum – has made the usefulness of shorthand designations all the more complicated and, often, all the more baffling. I like that some of the post-tonal folk are getting the “postmodern modernist” tag. Doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it?
As you can see from the byline above, what I’m about is leveling some of the pigeonholing designations that are rampant in both the music industry and the academy. That’s why you can turn up here one day and the subject will be Elliott Carter, on another it’s just as likely to be David S. Ware or Weezer.
It’s a conscious decision, but it’s also reflective of my own interests. I’m passionate about lots of kinds of music, and am a firm believer that there’s good music to be heard in many different styles. I’m so glad to be creatively active in a time period where there are several thought-provoking writers with similarly catholic tastes discussing music: Alex Ross, Steve Smith, Frank J. Oteri, and the aforementioned Dr. Smooke. They frequently inspire me to continue to expand my ears, refine my viewpoint, and, best of all, they always have great suggestions for the ever-expanding listening lists.
When people ask in turn what my music sounds like, I play them two clips: Jody Redhage singing one of my triadic-inflected songs and then my serial piece for alto flute and piano. Hopefully, this thwarts the overgeneralization issue!
Over at the Composer Forum, there’s been a discussion of the ‘pressures’ placed on composers to ‘toe the line’ stylistically in academia. Along the way, a couple of posters have raised the issue of ‘composing for the academy’ and, even more alarmingly, the idea that a teaching position is an easy career destination for composers. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading the posts, but I think that the aforementioned opinions may be hopelessly chimerical.
__________________________________
As always, my compadre Ken Ueno has a ready retort in the form of a creative work. He sent me a video this AM:
His notion of academic music: music that takes place in the classroom! (great activity, BTW)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Let’s unpack this further. Here are a few composers who currently have academic careers:
William Duckworth
Kyle Gann
Jennifer Higdon
John Corigliano
Brian Ferneyhough
Bright Sheng
Judith Shatin
Pretty stylistically diverse, huh? Based on the above, it’s hard to assert that one can generalize ‘academic music.’ The lesson I take from this is to compose what you want to compose. Life’s too short for any other, less authentic, approach.
However, in terms of getting teaching work, there are a LOT of other things a composer must be doing in addition to composing persuasively. Publishing in a scholarly area (theory or musicology), conducting or otherwise performing, distributing your music and obtaining performances, winning grants/commissions/competitions, service to the profession and to your local community, belonging to a scholarly organization and attending/presenting at its conferences, developing a network of musicians – peers and mentors – with whom to discuss and develop your career goals, maintaining an excellent job packet, keeping your references in the loop about your activities, and, of course, working to become an outstanding teacher.
Once you get a job, you’ll need to do all of this and still more: committee work, student advisement, applying for promotion and (if your institution has a tenure process) tenure, and attending plenty of meetings, trainings, campus events, student recitals, and concerts. If you’re in my situation, that of a contingent faculty member, you’ll also need to remain on the job market until someone offers you a long term position. All the while, you will need to find time to compose!
I say this not as a complaint – I love having the opportunity to teach at my institution – but as a bit of a reality check about the requirements of the profession. The notion that being an academic is some cushy gig and an easy way out for those who don’t write film music or pop would be laughable – there are often hundreds of applicants for an announced vacancy in theory/composition – if it weren’t so pervasive.
Emerging composers need to be encouraged to find the career path that’s right for them, based on their own particular set of talents and their professional goals. What they don’t need are sugar-coated stories that suggest to them that finding employment as a teacher is a “safety net.” It does them no good and the academic profession no favors.
Particularly in these lean economic times, teaching isn’t a refuge for composers. It is a career and calling to which one should be strongly committed.
____________________________________
Update: Attention job-seekers – David Rakowski’s blog has an article with excellent advice for composers who are seeking an academic position. Thanks Davy!
Composer, violinist, and performance/video artist Laurie Anderson has never been one to rest on her laurels. But Homeland, her latest project for Nonesuch takes her farther afield than she’s previously been.
Rather than staying at home to record, Anderson developed the album’s songs over a two year period of touring. And, for the first time, she’s involved her partner Lou Reed in a collaborative recording process (he receives a co-producer credit). The results sound recognizable as songs by Laurie Anderson; but the sonic formula has been tweaked – indeed, refreshed – by the risks taken and departures made during the recording process.
A recurring character is Fenway Bergamot, Anderson’s “male alter-ego,” who graces the album cover and performs on the recording.
Below are a couple of “making of” videos Nonesuch has posted to YouTube.
It’s hard to believe, but Kay Mitchell and I are celebrating our first Wedding Anniversary this weekend.
Traditionally, the 1st anniversary is celebrated with a gift of “paper.”
I took this as a cue to write a piece for Kay, setting one of her favorite poems (and mine): “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by William Butler Yeats.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I’ve set the poem for alto voice and viola. I was recently asked by Wendy Richman to compose a piece for singing violist as part of a commissioning project to create a repertory for that configuration. Wendy is super-talented and willing to try all manner of extended techniques. I was tempted, but I didn’t want to go there with this poem.
Thus, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” has turned out to be less complex than some of the other pieces being cooked up for Wendy’s commissioning project. David Smooke let me take a peek at his. It’s hard! But I really like it. Over at New Music Boxthis week he blogged about the challenges of creating a work that, while it aspires to simplicity, requires complexity. Smooke has the ability to create a piece that’s tremendously challenging yet organically assembled; it responds to a different set of challenges than mine – and in a totally committed way.
After years of creating relatively complex post-tonal music, the past several pieces that I’ve written are a shift of gears. They seem to be seeking rapprochement with my earlier, more lyrical style. How does the ‘inner modernist’ in me feel about the surface of my music getting more transparent again? Increasingly I think that, for me at least, compositional or stylistic language needn’t be an either/or binary. It certainly needn’t be the ‘moral’ choice envisioned by several generations of composers in the Twentieth Century. If a composer is employing all of their technical knowledge of the craft and making authentic decisions based on their compositional aesthetics, why can’t they explore a variety of sound worlds over their body of work?
In my work, language and style are becoming ‘piece-specific’ decisions: a response to the needs and requirements posed by a particular medium and, in a vocal work, the text. I feel good about the way that I responded to this text and to the challenge of creating a piece for two ‘voices’ that are often close together in register. I hope it works in the context of Wendy’s entire program. Perhaps it will be the cantabile palette-cleanser between super hard virtuoso workouts!
Delivered at Westminster Choir College’s 81st Commencement
May 15, 2010
By Christian Carey
President Rozanski, Provost Steven, Dean Annis, distinguished faculty and administrators, members of our campus community, most-welcome guests, and students of the graduating classes: I’m honored to be addressing you today. I found out about this speaking opportunity in a somewhat roundabout fashion. A few weeks ago I was asked by the college’s Director of External Affairs, Anne Sears, for a bio to put in the commencement program, to supply those in attendance with a bit more information about the speaker giving the charge at commencement. After picking my jaw up off the ground, I quickly emailed Anne back to ask if she was sure – really sure – that I’d been selected for this distinction. After being reassured by her that yes, I had indeed been asked to speak to you today; I felt humbled and more than a bit intimidated at being accorded this privilege and responsibility.
Shortly thereafter, I realized that the way this invitation came about was actually a serendipitous event, as it provided an excellent starting point – and not too bad of an anecdote – with which to begin my speech. One of my favorite English poems is “Surprised by Joy” by William Wordsworth, not only because it in itself is a beautiful work, but because its title has so often described experiences I’ve had throughout my life; in particular, my life in the arts.
Wordsworth’s poem begins: “Surprised by Joy, impatient as the wind…” and we can certainly identify with that impatience: particularly while waiting to receive our diploma! In the hectic postmillennial culture in which we find ourselves, it often seems as if patience is no longer prized as a virtue. Instead, we frequently are bombarded with media messages that prize fast results and instant gratification. You and I both know that this is not the path the graduates today have chosen. They have worked long and hard for their degrees, cultivating discipline, technique, and musicality. These are the skill sets and values that your teachers at Westminster Choir College have instilled in you. And you are fortunate indeed to have received this training, as it will help to sustain you in the challenging career paths you have chosen.
For no one who is in the arts for the long haul can expect the meteoric rise of Miley Cyrus, Susan Boyle, or David Archuleta to be the norm in our field. For every ‘American Idol’ winner there are countless musicians out there who are cultivating their artistry in relative obscurity. They do so not because they are waiting for ‘their fifteen minutes of fame,’ but because of their love of and respect for music. They may not gain that quick flash of ephemeral stardom, but we should never mistake this brief dalliance with fame and fortune for the only satisfying pathway in the arts. Please note that these truths may need to be communicated to our friends and family members who are non-musicians more than once: and that’s okay! But we cannot allow the clatter and glitz of our whirlwind fast media culture to distract us from our artistic goals, from our creative work. Thus, in our lives in music, patience, as well as persistence and perseverance, must be our bywords and indeed our virtues as each of us carves out their own path.
There will doubtless be naysayers who attempt to sully our path as well. I was reminded of this by a recent article in The New York Times, which profiled the winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Composition, Jennifer Higdon. As your music history professor Sharon Mirchandani will tell you, Higdon began her career not as a composer, but as a flutist. In fact, Sharon accompanied Higdon’s undergraduate flute recital at Bowling Green State University! It was only later on that she realized that her true calling was to be a composer. Please take note of this graduates – sometimes paths diverge from our initial expectations – this too is okay! (I received my Bachelor of Music degree in Voice – now I am a college music theory professor – that’s quite a divergence!)
Higdon caught up with and indeed moved past the rest of the pack very quickly. Her piece the Blue Cathedral is now the most often performed American orchestral work written in the past twenty-five years. Her Violin Concerto garnered her the Pulitzer Prize, and its recording will be released on the Deutsche Grammophon label this Fall, with the world-class violinist Hilary Hahn performing as soloist. But as a woman who began to pursue a career in composition later than her peers, Higdon experienced a great deal of discrimination, even heckling, as she forged a formidable voice and this significant career as a composer. She even had the unpleasant experience of being told by male composers that “the only reason she was successful was because she was a woman.” Imagine facing down that kind of ignorant behavior!
Higdon was kind enough to share her formula for dealing with irrational criticism. She says, “Everyone runs into naysayers, but if you love something enough and feel passionately enough, you just go on ahead, walk right round the person saying it, proceed down the road and don’t look back.” My father, to whom we’ll return later, often shared a Latin phrase that speaks to this as well: “Illegitimi non carborundem.” Loosely translated, it means: “Don’t let the bastards get you down!”The awareness that the artist’s path is long, without a specific ‘arrival point,’ but that it can be filled with many surprising joys, has never been more apparent to me than it was in December 2005, when I interviewed the American composer Elliott Carter as he neared his 97th birthday. Carter was then, as he is to this day at 101, busily composing, fulfilling multiple commissions for major orchestras and world class performers. Carter has dealt with his critics a bit differently than Higdon – he’s simply outlived them!
Having written my doctoral dissertation on his music, I was aware of his astounding vitality and continued productivity, but seeing him in person truly astounded me. Carter described the creative life this way: “When I’m out here in the physical world, I’m an old man, with all of the infirmities and challenges that come with living a very long life. But when I’m composing, I’m transported to another world, where its stimulating, very pleasant, and always engaging. Every night, my nurse has to drag me away from my writing desk!” Rather than rest on his laurels, rehashing the tried and true, Carter tries to approach each piece afresh. As I asked him about things he was working on over and over again he said, ”I’ve never tried that before and I thought it might be interesting to write a piece incorporating it.” He waited until age 94 to compose his first opera and at 101 years of age is still trying new things!
Elliott Carter supplies me with inspiration and a sense of the patience and long view that a life in the arts – notice I’m not calling it a career, but a life – requires. Another of my mentors, one with whom I was fortunate to study, was the composer Lukas Foss, who passed away just last year. I first met Lukas and took a lesson with him when I was still in my teens, but worked with him more extensively as a graduate student at Boston University. At BU, Lukas would frequently pass by the students at work in the lounge area of the music building, poring over scores or correcting parts. He’d peer over the composers’ shoulders, playfully make faux sweeping comments:”Too diatonic! Put in more dynamics! Where’s this phrase going?” On the way back from the beverage machine, Lukas would often pass along an extra cup of cocoa or coffee.
The last time I saw Lukas was in 2004. The Music Festival of the Hamptons had programmed Mourning Madrid, my piece for live locomotive and orchestra. Lukas was a fixture of the festival: advising on the programming, conducting, and appearing as a piano soloist. In a conversation after the Hamptons concert, I thanked Lukas for his generosity at our first meeting, when he’d listened to a tape of an early piece of mine for string quartet. Even though there were glaring shortcomings in the music, he cared enough about the fragile confidence of a fledgling composer to give words of encouragement that would inspire me to go on. As he would so often in the future, Lukas had told me to “keep writing.”
In parting, he said with a smile, “Remember what I told you? I was right.”
Lukas taught me that even the most gifted of us is responsible to share our artistry with others with a sense of compassion, commitment, and in a spirit of dedicated service.
Since returning to Westminster in 2007, I’ve been repeatedly supplied joyful surprises and also sudden jolts of the less pleasant variety – alas, life cannot be counted on for one without sometimes experiencing the other. This juxtaposition was set in stark contrast this past summer, when, as many of you know, my wife and I got married August 1st, only to have my father pass away just a week after our wedding. But even in the midst of the grief I felt at losing a parent were surprising joys. Many of these came by way of teaching colleagues and students, past and present. Within days of my father’s passing, countless hugs were dispensed, orchids arrived on our doorstep, and we received many beautiful cards of condolence – as well as many notes on my Facebook Wall. Some of you, bearing in mind our family’s beloved Labrador retriever Humphrey, made donations to the Guide Dog Foundation in my father’s memory. I was deeply touched and remain most grateful.
Each of these gestures reminded me that I was a part of a caring and supportive campus community. As commencement’s conclusion nears, your thoughts today may be about your life after Westminster. But I hope that you will remember that you remain a part of this community. Indeed, this will be a touchstone and wellspring for friendships, support, and encouragement for the rest of your lives. After all, we musicians must stick together!
I’ll close with a quote from my father, who, like all good Irish cops, shared many anecdotes, witticisms, and one-liners that I cherish along with his memory. But the one that has remained with me, throughout the many joyful surprises and moments of adversity I’ve experienced, is from my driving lessons with him as a teenager. Having been trained in the high speed pursuit of hardened criminals, teaching a trepidatious sixteen year-old to merge onto the Belt Parkway must have been child’s play for my Dad. But he was an excellent teacher, and always served as a calming presence, even during my attempts to Parallel Park. His mantra for driving, which he repeated over and over, was “always keep your sights high.”
Its a quote I’ve repeated to myself often, both on snowy drives and in the hurly-burly of pursuing artistic dreams. It applies equally to those about to embark on their post-graduate lives: “Always keep your sights high.”
Jennifer Higdon is featured in today’s New York Times. Vivian Schweitzer does a nice job interviewing the 2010 Pulitzer Prizewinner, discussing her music, career path, and even composer’s anxiety.
Higdon is remarkably candid about the stresses associated with the creative process. She says,“Starting a piece is the worst … and that can stretch from one day to three weeks of agony. The cats run and hide.”
Higdon’s right – getting started is often the most challenging part of composing. And, funnily enough, the cats at our house occasionally take umbrage too. The picture below is Happy, our Tabby, sitting down on my laptop and banishing the Finale score I had in process with a flick of her tail.
Our cats are even more likely to run and hide when I’m grading!
This Friday and Saturday, I’ll be attending the Eighth Annual conference of the Music Theory Society of the Middle Atlantic at Penn State University. I’ll be presenting a paper on Ralph Shapey’s late music as part of the Saturday morning session on Postwar Composers. I’ve been a member of MTSMA since its first year of activity, and have attended a number of the society’s conferences. It’s very gratifying to be asked to present.
You can check out the conference schedule here and abstracts here. If any readers are attending the conference, please say hello!
Entries (RSS)