Sequenza21

The Countdown continues.

Samuel Vriezen.  Composer.  From The Netherlands.

Did you learn anything in music school? Or does the phrase “circle of fifths” mean nothing to you?

Louis Andriessen taught me to use a double barline whenever there is a tempo change. Later, though, I started writing pieces in which performers have gradual tempo changes independently of one another all the time, and I hardly use double barlines anymore.

What’s your favorite “bad” piece of music? And briefly justify your crappy taste.

Wish I had one! I actually think all of my favorite music is quite good. Or is it about something I’m not “supposed” to like, by some mysterious agency or other? What would the Taste Police arrest me for first – enjoying Beat It or enjoying the Carceri d’Invenzione cycle? How to answer this question? Suppose I enjoy humming The Internationale while taking a shower, would that be sufficiently problematic? Not that I do though, and anyway you guys just ousted the Republicans and voted for a candidate widely known to be a “socialist”. So it may be the mildly embarassing erotic poetry in Stimmung, which, as a whole, is a great piece of course. Or perhaps it could be a piece by John Adams, whom I’m not generally a fan of, except that the Grand Pianola Music does manage a level of banality that I find somehow impressive.

Your five-composition-long playlist for Schoenberg would contain:

Obviously, there’s only one thing you could want to say to Schoenberg, and that is “Hey, lighten up already!” and I guess I’d end up playing him Nancarrow or something. But really, there’s this American obsession with Schoenberg that I don’t quite share. When I was a student at The Hague, Schoenberg had at that school already become a kind of cartoon version of the model modernist – not an Oedipal father figure by a long shot anymore (actually, there’s a beautiful sculpture of him in the building where you have his profile hollowed out of a transparent slab of glass).

Instead, Dutch music life was at that time drenched in Stravinsky, particularly through Louis Andriessen’s and Elmer Schönberger’s depiction of him in their book, The Apollinian Clockwork – a great read, but at some point many of us were getting worried that irony, additive rhythm, variable ostinato, block forms and twisted stylistic paraphrase (‘reference’) had become mandatory. So I’m substituting Stravinsky for Schoenberg, I lock the old devil up in some dark CIA basement at a secret location in Eastern Europe, gag him – I mean we’re in a Taste Police mood in this here questionnaire anyway – and make him listen to:

Tom Johnson, The Chord Catalogue
Jürg Frey, 2nd String Quartet
Xenakis, Eonta
Cage, the Europeras
Stravinsky, Petrouchka

– absolutely fantastic pieces all – and we play some loud complex sine wave chord or other by La Monte Young between sessions, until he promises never to write the Octet again.

Congress calls on you to draw up a bailout plan for contemporary music! What do you do?

We stage performances of Cardew’s The Great Learning at the White House and make the Senate do a production of Cage’s Song Books. (Congress itself might be a good group for my piece Local Orchestra – click here.

Samuel Andreyev.  Composer.  From Paris.  The photo is copyright Philippe Stirnweiss 2008.

Did you learn anything in music school?  Or does the phrase “circle of fifths” mean nothing to you?

I learned much at the Paris Conservatoire: beyond the obvious technical competence which everyone must acquire in their own way, I was given the freedom and time to develop my fledgling ideas in the most extraordinarily fruitful and stimulating atmosphere..

What’s your favorite “bad” piece of music? And briefly justify your crappy taste.

I consider a lot  of the oboe repertoire I play to be bad music, for instance, Pasculli or Kalliwoda. Endless sequences, rather uninspired melodic content, and so on. Yet, despite the lack of intrinsic interest, the performance of this music perhaps can be justified by the fact that it is fun to play, and expanded the technical possibilities of the oboe. I also have a soft spot for Bow Wow Wow, which I refuse to justify.

Your five-composition-long playlist for Schoenberg would contain:

Five pieces for orchestra, Four Orchestral Songs, the Second Quartet, The first Kammersymphonie, and the String Trio.

Congress calls on you to draw up a bailout plan for contemporary music!  What do you do?

There are only temporary, provisional solutions to this ‘problem’, which I don’t believe really is a problem, except for certain composers who insist on living off their irrational compulsion to write music. However, the single most important area requiring development, especially in North America, is music education in public schools. Without that basic groundwork, it would be difficult to change the situation in any significant way.

Rodney Lister.  Composer.  And Boston new music scene insider. 

Did you learn anything in music school?

It’s been so long ago that I don’t remember.

Or does the phrase “circle of fifths” mean nothing to you?

If it did would that mean I’d have learned anything?

(Of course I did–I learned a fair amount about writing and thinking about music–from people like Mac Peyton (who I studied with for four years) and Donald Martino (who I raked leaves for–what are students for?) (and why can’t I find any like that)  (who were both on the faculty at New England Conservatory, where I was a student) and Ezra Sims (who was just around) and all ready to be a guru.   I learned maybe even more in the two years after I was at NEC, when I was living in London and studying–sort of–with Max (otherwise known as Peter Maxwell) Davies.

What’s your favorite “bad” piece of music?  And briefly justify your crappy taste.

Define bad.

I love the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony.   It’s not bad, really, but I’m not sure I’d exactly say that it’s exactly good either.   Is Percy Grainger bad?   What about Virgil Thomson (Symphony on a Hymn Tune)?   In some circles Babbitt is supposed to be bad, but my experience is that people who think that are mostly dealing in received wisdom and don’t know anything about any of his music–or at least don’t know any of his music directly.

Dave Soldier’s Most Unwanted Music is meant to be bad, and I think that’s pretty terrific (It’s supposed to be guaranteed that no more than 200 people on the globe will like it–I think I’ve met all of them.)

Not that you ask for it, but I can give you the pieces I hope never to hear again as long as I live:   Also Sprach Zarathrustra (except for the beginning, particularly the first note), the complete Daphnis and Chloe, the Dumki Trio, and the Tschaikovsky Trio.

Your five-composition-long playlist for Schoenberg would contain:

What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Is the implication that you want a list of five Steve Reich pieces to prove how cool it is and how cool Schoenberg could be if he’d realized he was wrong?

Congress calls on you to draw up a bailout plan for contemporary music!  What do you do?

Well, I think the best way to get people to liking it is to get them to know it–actually listen to it and engage with it.   For high school students–and younger–, who I deal with a lot of my time, I’m sure that it has to do with getting them to play it.   (Generally they like it–whether it’s Cage, Schoenberg, Nico Muhly, Ruth Crawford, Sebastian Currier, Lee Hyla, Martin Bresnick, William Bolcom, or Piers Hellawell.   In my experience Morton Feldman is a hard sale, though.)  At any rate, any time it’s personalized, it seems to be enjoyed.

Folks: I respect you all very much. Really. But you don’t know jack about the upcoming Sequenza21 concerts. By way of fixing this (your) problem, we at the site will be offering you penetrating, deep glimpses into the inner lives of the composers and performers involved in This. The Mother Of All Concerts. The Concerts The New York Times Does Not Want You To Know About (else, why haven’t they covered it yet? Huh? Huh?).

First up: Jeremy Podgursky. Composer. (Or just a poser??? You decide.)

Did you learn anything in music school?  Or does the phrase “circle of fifths” mean nothing to you?

I learned not to throw stones in ivory towers.  I also learned that the first seventeen years of my life were lazy, unfocused, and unforgivable.  Music school taught me how to look fun in the eye and say, “bite me!”.  And what’s this “circle of fifths” stuff?  I went to music school in Louisville, KY and the only fifths we knew of were filled with bourbon.

What’s your favorite “bad” piece of music?  And briefly justify your crappy taste.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.  Either that or “November Rain” by GNR.  Bonnie Tyler’s histrionics have earned her the title of Mrs. Meatloaf.  Slash’s guitar solo out in front of the church is all-the-more stunning due to the fact that his guitar isn’t plugged in.

Your five-composition-long playlist for Schoenberg would contain:

1. Anything by Scelsi – “hey Arnold, you digging that tone center?”

2. Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich

3. Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed

4. Coptic Light by Morton Feldman

5. that “Do-Re-Mi” number from The Sound of Music

Congress calls on you to draw up a bailout plan for contemporary music!  What do you do?

First, I guess I would get my suit dry cleaned.  Second, I would burn a CD of Sousa marches in case they wanted examples of contemporary music.  Third, I would institute a draft for all performers graduating from music school to serve a four year tour-of-duty in one of many government subsidized regional orchestras and chamber groups.  These ensembles would perform and record only contemporary music five days a week, five hours a day.  LAST BUT NOT LEAST: I would insist upon the removal of Alaska from the U.S. and replace it with Iceland (sorry, but I couldn’t help myself).

On December 9, 11, 12 and 13, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will present Lightning at our feet, The Ridge Theater and Michael Gordon’s multimedia song cycle inspired by Emily Dickinson. Co-commissioned by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston and BAM for the 2008 Next Wave Festival, this work reunites Michael Gordon and The Ridge Theater, the creative team behind the critically-acclaimed Decasia (2001): Bill Morrison (films), Laurie Olinder (projections) and Bob McGrath (stage direction). Lightning at our feet straddles arts genres, giving Dickinson’s poetry mobility in music while encompassing her words in a world of visual imagery. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItD4M5qcpYY[/youtube]