Comments on: Urban Mavericks

By: Lawrence Dillon

Lawrence Dillon — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:09:52 +0000

Kyle, I remember this lecture well – I forwarded it to several people. But I think there is a difference between someone who refuses to engage in approved contemporary trends and someone who has no influences. Mavericks are unbranded – but they all have mothers (to reference a theme for the day). But as you say, there is nothing peculiarly American about this idea. In fact, though branding didn’t originate in this country, it’s safe to say that is has flourished here as nowhere else.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:40:05 +0000

Knew you’d ask. Ives made an intense study of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms in order to figure out how to make *American* tunes suitable for symphonic development. Though he perforce created in isolation, once he met Ruggles, Cowell, Becker, and Harrison he became loyal to them and close, in his way; hell, he shared an apartment with fellow music students from Yale until he got married. Nancarrow took most of his rhythmic ideas from Cowell’s New Musical Resources, and stayed in touch with Carter and Cage throughout his “lost” years, refusing their attempts to help him get his music out. Later became friends with Peter Garland, Gordon Mumma, Ligeti, Julio Estrada, and so on. There are no mavericks, it’s a false category created to allow the establishment to legitimize certain hand-picked American composers who use “non-European” composing techniques while still marginalizing all the other similar composers. I’ve been fighting it for many years.

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2008/02/my_longyear_musicology_lecture.html

By: Lawrence Dillon

Lawrence Dillon — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:17:29 +0000

Would you put Ives and Nancarrow in the first category?

You make a good point, and it fits with the implication I was making (maybe a bit too subtly) that most true mavericks go unnoticed, almost by definition.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 13 May 2012 03:21:06 +0000

“There are certainly composers who head off into the cultural wilderness and create work that is insightful and enduring. Likewise, there are composers who cluster into cells of like-minded artists and show us things we never could have seen otherwise.”

Since Cowell, Cage, Feldman, Harrison, Partch, Young, and the other alleged Mavericks worked closely together and influenced each other, it has always seemed to me that they belong in your second category, and that your first category, however blessed by Michael Tilson Thomas, is virtually a null set.