Sequenza21/

“Eh? Speak up, I can’t hear you…” The problem? Hearing loss from too-loud music. The culprit? Composers! All our fortissimos are endangering the very people we rely on to make our music. From a recent St. Louis Dispatch story:

Seated in front of the percussion section, and subjected to “ferocious” sound, [bass clarinetist James] Meyer worried about the effects on his hearing. He did research at the library and talked with people at 17 different orchestras around the country about their setups. He drew diagrams. He took readings of decibel levels. “The threshold of pain is (about) 118 decibels. I took a lot of readings (on stage) over that.” [….] Many contemporary works rely heavily on percussion and high volume, notes [percussionist Rich] O’Donnell. The orchestra played a lot of them during the Leonard Slatkin years, in particular. “I think there are a lot of composers who have trouble writing a soft piece,” O’Donnell said. Conductors can be prickly, too. O’Donnell recalls bringing up noise issues at a meeting with Slatkin and getting a glare: “He said, ‘Are you trying to limit my artistic expression?’”

While we may side with Slatkin and pooh-pooh this as over-worried hype, better think again if you’re hoping to have that European performance; As the NYT reported recently, workplace noise-protection regulations there now apply to symphony orchestras just as much as to factories:

They had rehearsed the piece only once, but already the musicians at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were suffering. Their ears were ringing. Heads throbbed. Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, “State of Siege,” by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable. So instead of having its world premiere on April 4, the piece was dropped. “I had no choice,” said Trygve Nordwall, the orchestra’s manager. “The decision was not made artistically; it was made for the protection of the players.”

Geoff Edgers over at Boston.com’s Exhibitionist blog, posted a few thoughts today on composers’ attitudes to their early works. Some keep ‘em, some never want them to see the light of day, and some wish that, even if they might have become popular, they’d just go away.

I know I’m a pack-rat. I still have every cassette tape recording I ever made in my bedroom, starting at about age 15; and in a box in my garage is the musty, yellowed remnants of my first-ever score (titled Mountains, it opens with long string runs up and down a C diatonic scale… pretty darn original, huh?). I’m fifty-freaking-two now, and so much of this early stuff is embarassing, hilarious, even painful — so why do I still keep it all around? I suppose simply because it’s a record of me; most everything I became musically is hiding out in this or that phrase or moment.

How about you? Are you a hoarder, historian, or spin-meister? Do you want your musical story with warts and all, or all neat and tidy?

You know, he’s not my favoritest composer or anything, and, yeah, everyone should get more performances.  But I have this slight–but nagging–bafflement as to why Jacob Druckman’s music doesn’t get more performances.  My puzzlement was provoked just the other day as Brangle 3 shuffled onto my iPod.  What a smashing piece!  And same with Counterpoise.  These are big, rock’em sock’em orchestra pieces that, though aggressive, stand a chance with the sort of audiences who are game for the Rite or some Berg.  Maybe Druckman’s getting some play elsewhere and my head is just in the sand.  But how about some good ole’ fashioned drum beating for those whose music’s not getting due play.  Huh?

“During the process leading to political independence for Finland in 1917, culture and the arts were regarded as basic prerequisites for an autonomous nation.”

 – Finnish Music Quarterly. 3 (2006), p. 6

Well?

Recently I had one of those experiences that have become cliche for the contemporary composer. I wrote a piece that was really, really hard; there wasn’t enough rehearsal time; and the performance (despite heroic efforts) was pretty rough.

I’m still stubbornly proud of my work. But, sometime during the whole process, it dawned on me: whereas some of the difficult music I’ve composed I honestly do wish had been easier, I have never wished any of the easy pieces I’ve written had been harder.

Have you?

A few nicely surprising identifications, but if the combined brainpower of the S21 crowd only recognized two-thirds of the 36 faces, seems — what with the long, cold and snowy holidays coming up — a little catching up on any of these diverse and worthwhile composers would be time well-spent:

1. Maryanne Amacher  2. Gerald Barry  3. Dennis Báthory-Kitsz

4. David Behrman  5. Earle Brown  6. Allison Cameron

7. Maria de Alvear  8. Francis Dhomont  9. Allain Gaussin

10. Francisco Guerrero-Marin  11. Kamran Ince  12. Iván Naranjo

13. Alphonse Izzo  14. Monique Jean  15. Camille Kerger

16. Christina Kubisch  17. Paul Lansky  18. Mario Lavista

19. Daniel Lentz  20. Stanley Lunetta  21. Marc Mellits

22. Gilberto Mendes  23. John Howell Morrison  24. Gráinne Mulvey

25. Sarah Peebles  26. Christopher Penrose  27. Eliane Radigue

28. John Rea  29. Marga Richter  30. Linda Catlin Smith

31. Yasunao Tone  32. Lois V. Vierk  33. María Cecilia Villanueva

34. Claude Vivier  35. James Wood  36. Isang Yun

Why these, here and now? Just as with the monoliths, as soon as you dig them up and fly to Jupiter, they’re not nearly as exciting… I happen to have a folder with all kinds of composer portraits, that I attach to the I.D. tags of MP3s in my collection. I like to put a face on the person behind the piece, to take a little time to not just know the music but the living, breathing person as well. These were just a few, chosen almost at random, of the folks I listen to with some regularity, and don’t see why you shouldn’t too.

As to the fabulous 4-CD prize, technically Kyle Gann got the most, but that’s almost too easy for our resident vetran of the trenches. David Toub wins in the creatively weird category, hands down!… But the real award should end up with John “Sparky” Prokop, for getting almost as many as Mr. Gann, and showing a certain depth and breadth in who he was able to pick out. So Sparky, head to my website and find the email address at the bottom of most any page, send me a little note & I’ll be sending YOU a Cage-feast for your holiday repast.

Like the Monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey, this link simply appears, unbidden… What does it mean? What purpose can there be?… WHO will discover the answer?… (and win my own copy of the Asphodel 4-CD John Cage Atlas Eclipticalis & Winter Music delivered to their door?…) All I know is the magic number seems to be 32…

Adventurous internet pal/violinist/composer Johnny Chang just sent around another reminder that the next round of the justly-famous MicroScore Project is upon us. I herewith pass his very words on to you:

First if you don’t know about the project, please have a listen to some microscores first. As you are listening attempt to imagine a performance of 40 to 60 (or more) compositions, ideas, concepts, all coming together to create a kaleidoscope of sonic-visual tapestry. From our Vancouver, B.C. concert of March 2007 (PDF program here):

PART 1

PART 2

And now if you are still interested, read on !

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INVITING Writers, Musicians, Artist, Performers, Instrumentalists, Listeners

Seeking 30-second compositions that can be performed as solo AND duo - instrumentation: violin and cello, or for one or two performers. Just to clarify, the composition has to function Both as a solo AND when performed by the duo. Potentially there will be three performances of the work. The first show will be the SOLO Violin versions.

For the moment, the show is scheduled for February 20, 2008 at the Wine Cellar (Auckland) - the submission period ends January 19.

Some guidelines for Scores Submissions.

1. Scores sent in PDF format should be set in A4 or 11′x7.5′ format.
2. If you are sending hard copies instead, please make sure to have 3 copies of the score.
(Most times it should not be necessary to send individual parts as the compositions are so short. Please give this some thought.)
3. Attach a very brief micro-bio of yourself, maximum 30 words.

Email: johnny.echo@gmail.com

______________________________

The fun things about these pieces: 1) you don’t need to be an official composer, or even use traditional notation; you just need to be a person with an good, interesting idea and a way to score it; 2) the pieces end up all contributing to a larger whole, both with all the other pieces, and in their mutability from solo to duo settings. Go for it, have fun!

You might think that as musical genres splinter listeners would develop more specialized musical tastes, focusing their interests on a smaller number of genres, but some new research from Zogby International and the Norman Lear center provides some interesting perspective on the situation.  Their survey is fairly broad, covering a wide variety of areas of culture and not going into much specific detail in any area, but one of their questions was “What types of music do you enjoy.”

It turns out that younger generations enjoy on average a larger number of genres than older generations do:

Furthermore, if you break down the enjoyment of genres by age demographic, you find two interesting things: First, in the younger demographics the distribution of enjoyment is more even, with a smaller difference between the percent of the population who enjoys the least popular genre and those who enjoy the most popular genre.  In the 18-24 demographic, enjoyment of World is 20.17% and Rock is 80.26%, a difference of 60.09%, whereas in the 70+ demographic enjoyment of Punk is at 0% and enjoyment of Classical is at 73.45%.  Second, even though enjoyment is more evenly distributed, enjoyment of the most popular genre is higher in the younger demographics than in the older demographics–enjoyment of Rock is at 80.26% in the 18-24 demographic, and enjoyment of classical in the 70+ demographic is 73.45%.  Here are the graphs:

This survey unfortunately doesn’t differentiate among different degrees of enjoyment, so it’s hard to draw any firmer conclusions.  For example, enjoyment of Classical in the 25-29 demographic is number 3 at 62.32% and in the 55-64 demographic it’s number 1 at 62.46%.  As close as those numbers appear, it seems likely that the older demographic has higher intensity of enjoyment for Classical, but there’s no way to tell from this study.  Nonetheless, the results that we can see are quite interesting.

No really. How?

And while we’re on the topic, what other composers have odd names that merit a refresher course from the more learned folks out there? There may be two valid ways of pronouncing a name, like Lutoslawski, so what’s your favorite?