sure there is more to Tom’s music than predictability. In my analysis, predictability in his work is part of self-reflexivity, which makes you extremely aware of the interval between sound and concept. I have an article about this in Dutch, should translate that into English some time…

Though even that analysis of course doesn’t exhaust the range of his work. There’s always more!

Nothing doing there. I guess I was playing the “devil’s advocate” – those quotes can really freak people out – I was simply making a joke – that word “latent” has about a billion different connotations…but since you express interest….the vision of a Tom Johnson, even predictably, no doubt raises the spector of Tom himself – a real lovable guy. Good luck! I hope this helps, Steve…

DR

Well you know, not everybody exposed to two hours of Freeman Etudes would call those works exactly seductive.

More importantly, I really think the whole idea of an Absolute Present is very misleading: at best a first step in the right direction which would eventually get rid of it. Point is you just can’t really be in the present, you’re always moving out of it, and the interesting thing is how different musics of the musical family you’re trying to outline with the term deal with that question. In Cage I’d say the present consists of things suddenly being there and being gone at some unique point in time, in Feldman it’s surface fluctuation, in Wolff the present is about action and decision, in Tom Johnson it’s about predictability, in early Reich I guess you get something like a dazzling continuity, in Young it approaches notions of the eternal, and Kyle himself seems to have been talking about meandering. These all point to very different relations to the problem of the present – the problem of the present being that it can’t ever quite be absolute before it has passed us by.

Steve, I think Feldman writes music outside time in the sense (if there is any sense to what I’m writing, which is questionable) that after awhile, time just doesn’t matter anymore. You have no conception three hours into For Christian Wolf that you’re at hour #3. You’re just in a particular place, or space-time equivalent. At least that’s how I feel.

Well, read the whole essay sometime!

Basically I think your response boils down to intellectual fatigue. Why categorize anyone–especially if it’s hard? I’d be the first to say that categories should never be so rigid that fluidity between them is impossible. Beyond this, however, I think cognisance of categories is an aid to appreciating the diversity of styles lumped together under such truly problematic terms like “classical” and “contemporary” music. And while I take some issue with the broadness with which Gann uses “Romanticism” and “Music of the Absolute Present,” these are not meaningless distinctions, and knowing more about the terms helps us listen to music of both.

Steve–

I have problems thinking in terms of rational and irrational. But, yes, the weakness in Gann’s distinction is present when we consider the addidtive rhythmic music of Reich and Glass: what could be more “logical” than that? And yet the ethos of early minimalism has everything to do with Cage and Feldman. I think the real paradigm to contrast with Romanticism is “Eclecticism.”

Chris–

Your experience gets at something deeper than Gann’s post, I think. It seems to me hard to overstate to influence of the visual arts on Cage and Feldman. Implicit in my essay is a distinction between “pieces of music” and “sound art.” Sound art, like much Cage and Feldman, pertains to a different concept of musical time–one ideally suited to performing arts cafes and galleries.

Steve, what you wrote really hit home for me as someone who composes a lot for dance. My music for dancers often follows or expounds upon a logic borne out of the movement and theater which (especially with the work of contemporary choreographers) isn’t always…uh…logical. The dance doesn’t have a “form” that can be connected to traditional classical forms (theme and development, fugues, A/B/A, etc). Composing this way means you have to go with a different kind of flow I guess. And the results – the final combination of movement and music – can be truly sublime.

I should also make it clear that when I compose for dance, I start from day one with the rehearsals of the movement. I work very collaboratively with dancers – which is actually rarer than you might think.

I should also say that composing this way – creating music with some of the techniques we might describe as “absolute present” – is NOT easy. Not that the value of a creative work should be equated with how HARD it was to realize (boo hoo); But what Kyle may be griping about is that we’re not talking about a compositional approach/style/whatever that is the result of ignorance.

I’ve always hated the term “outsider” art, for instance. Kyle is on to something here…