inspirations

All the Things We Are: Learning from Messiaen

2011-11-19T12:26:00.008-05:00

At age 8 I began composing short vignettes for clarinet and trumpet, which I titled ‘symphonies’. When I turned 11, my grandmother bought me a beat-up spinet for $300, and I took to it like a fish to water. Soon afterwards my guinea pig Apollo died, my mom – observing my grief – suggested that I memorialize my deceased pet with an original piece of music. Thus A Pig, op. 1 was born, a combination of the Moonlight Sonata (in 5/4 time), Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C#minor, a Joplin rag, and Martha My Dear. The following summer I attended music camp for the first time and witnessed a concert that changed my life forever. A pianist – probably an ambitious conservatory student who happened to be on the camp staff – performed two movements from Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus, and I was thoroughly enchanted by the glorious, epic sound. I clearly recall glancing down at the program where I spotted the composer’s name listed – Olivier Messiaen. I had never heard of him, and only had a vague idea what a living composer was, but I remember thinking that it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. “Whatever that guy does,” I decided then and there, “That’s the job I want to do when I grow up.”

Subsequently I began to compose a whole host of chamber music, mostly for my friends – Andrea, Rafael, Aaron, Rachel – short pieces for my woodwind quintet, and eventually pieces for my youth orchestra and high-school jazz band and wind ensemble. I regularly visited the public library and returned with armfuls of LPs from the contemporary music – as many records as they would allow me to take; I voraciously absorbed all sorts of new sounds – the complete works of Webern (conducted by Craft), Berg’s Violin Concerto and Wozzeck, Ives Fourth Symphony, Ligeti Chamber Concerto, Xenakis Pithoprakta, Britten’s War Requiem, not to mention the electronic music of Babbitt, Stockhausen, Ussachevsky, Leuning, Schaeffer, the American symphonists – Harris, Hanson, Porter – and the following generation – Martino, Schuman, Mennin, Persichetti, Carter, Kirchner – the New York school of Cage, Feldman, Brown, South American composers like Chávez, Revueltas, Ginastera, and Villa-Lobos.

However, Messiaen’s music remained my prime obsession; I listened to all of the recorded works I could get my hands on. In college I began to learn the less difficult movements of the Vingt regards on piano and eventually wrote a 90-page analysis for the N.E.H. of his epic piano solo La fauvette des jardins. After graduating I bummed around in Paris, playing on the streets, hoping one day to catch a glimpse of Messiaen improvising at the Église de la Trinité, but I was eventually informed by the brusque clerk at the Église that «le maître» rarely performed anymore. A disappointed stalker, I contented myself with rehashing jazz standards outside the Place des vosges, until one day my horn got stolen and I abandoned Paris to work on a goat farm in Languedoc-Roussillon. But that’s a whole other story…

And Messiaen - what is it about his music that is so attractive to young composers? I have often wondered, since many of my colleagues have mentioned being drawn to Turangalîla or the Quatour pour la fin du temps at an early age. Perhaps it is because his music is very direct, the harmonic and rhythmic language so clear and consistent. Melody, too – as in Stravinsky’s music – is ever-present, often manifesting itself as an incarnation of plainchant or birdsong.

There is also a child-like quality to Messiaen’s music. In saying this, I make a distinction between childish and child-like, childish meaning silly or immature, and child-like meaning playful and full of wonder. Writing music involves at least some sense of play, often in the form of experimentation. And Messiaen never ceases to discover, combining disparate, seemingly unrelated ingredients in his musical recipes. In conversation, Dutilleux characterized Messiaen as «presque un naïf», a person – and a composer – free from artifice and pretense. Messiaen’s music seems blissfully free from self-consciousness, immune to “anxiety of influence” and other such destructive and soul-sucking mindsets. He plays – with birdsong, with Hindu rhythms and Javanese textures, with natural scenic landscapes, with Tristan, with colors, with Japanese Gagaku court ritual, and yes, with spirituality. He is neither flippant nor capricious about his faith; rather, he is comfortable enough with it to express it straightforwardly in musical language – from literal scripture to abstract contemplations of arcane Catholic philosophy, from plainchant to fugue to obscure liturgical references.

It should therefore be unsurprising that Messiaen was able to clearly articulate his distilled musical language in the 1942 treatise Technique de mon langage musicale. His ability – his need – to combine and blend these far-flung influences was framed by a rigorous harmonic, rhythmic, and modal/melodic context. Like Bartók before him, he found it useful to analyze and systematize the various aspects (technique) of his musical language – including rhythmic patterns and pitch ordering. By examining more deeply the structure of his music, he was able to concretize and codify his very instincts. It strikes me as completely natural that Messiaen – due to the rigor and clarity of his thinking – ended up both discovering serialism and then immediately abandoning it as an insufficient and inherently flawed mode of expression. Surely it was a universe too generic, sterile, and restricted for this quirky and musically irreverent soul.

What can we artists learn from a composer as idiosyncratic as Messiaen, a musician whose compositional process and influences were so unorthodox? I believe that it is more fruitful to take a broader view of his creativity than it is to study his color-mapping and theological ruminations, entertaining though they may be. Messiaen was a composer who joyfully followed his own instincts and inspirations; he twisted and mashed them together, molding utterly original shapes. However eclectic both the basic components and the resultant forms may have seemed to others, to him they complemented each other harmoniously. Perhaps from Messiaen we can learn that there is value and vitality in embracing all the worlds to which we are inextricably drawn. That finding a personal ‘voice’ lies less in a search for as-yet-unmapped-territory than in permitting that mysterious and joyful brew of disparate, possibly unrelated, elements which comprise the totality of that which we love to rise to the surface – engendering, via a clear formal structure, a unique and wholly original contribution.

Why Louis is Different

2010-12-09T21:01:00.002-05:00

Got to represent in 2010...

Here's my recent article about Louis Andriessen in New Music Box.

Mover & Shaker

2009-09-03T18:40:00.006-05:00

I’ve been in Rio this month, sitting in on samba and chôros gigs with some great musicians: Gabriel Improta, Andrea Ernest Dias, Zé Paulo Becker, Sheila Zagury, Yamandú Costa, Daniela Spielmann, Tomás Improta, Itibere Zwarg, and many others… My first week it rained steadily, so I hibernated indoors and practiced. Between tunes, my mind drifted to thoughts of my friends up north in Salvador da Bahia – a rhythmic paradise and cultural crossroads of Brazil.

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In 2003 I traveled to Salvador at the behest of Lucas and Pedro Robatto, who had invited me to teach composition and clarinet during seminários at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. While there I was determined to improve my caxixi playing, so each day after teaching I would trek to Julio Goés’ house to take lessons. It took about an hour to walk there from Pelourinho in the town center. I’d arrive in his front room, a starkly empty chamber save for a couple of chairs and a rug with percussion instruments laid out: caxixi, shekere, double-bells, berimbau, and small drums used in candomblé – a Yoruban ritual ceremony (overlaid with a Catholic veneer) that permeates the Northeast coast of Brazil.

Julio was a superb craftsman, and musicians from all over Brazil – Recife, São Paulo, Belem, Brazilia, Porto Alegre, Rio, Manaus, Belo Horizonte – placed orders on a regular basis. All except one of the instruments in the room had been hand-made by him; the oddball was a tabla drum from India, his preferred toy of the moment. Often, as we concluded a lesson, Julio would grab the tabla and we’d spend half an hour or more jamming. It was a study in innovation to witness a Brazilian traditional musician inventing rhythmic patterns on a watery, lush tabla. “I love the subtlety, the flavors…” he would kvell, coaxing bubbly tones from the drumheads.

Julio was perhaps best known for his sonorous caxixi, which he manufactured in an abundant variety of shapes, sizes, and sounds. Though hardly the most renowned of Brazilian instruments, caxixi occupy a central place in capoeira; during expositions of this dance/martial-art tradition, a berimbau stick is grasped in one hand, and the bow-shaped frame – along with one or more caxixi – is held in the other. In this role they serve an accompanimental function, akin to the West African rattle, from which they are descended.

More recently, virtuoso percussionists like Airto Moreira and Naná Vasconcelos began experimenting with caxixi as expressive instruments, featuring them in solos, designing and executing complex rhythms and backbeats, and dramatically raising standards of technique. It was this newer tradition – along with the caxixi’s handy portability (they can be played while sitting, standing, or walking) – that inspired me, at age 21, to purchase my first pair at Drummer’s World in New York.

My first teacher, Nadav Serling, demonstrated a series of exercises – accompanied by textural swishes, shakes, and swirls of sound – that allowed polyrhythms to flow between the two hands; he dissected complex beats into basic rhythmic cells of twos and threes. As I improved, I began to diverge from more traditional grooves. I enjoyed recreating typically American beats, in addition to the samba-inflected ones. I found that caxixi could provide a funky, gritty complement to singing or rapping, and I used them as teaching devices when working with kids, as well as in my band Peace by Piece.

In Brazil I also learned that playing two caxixi could be a full-body experience, in harmony with the natural rhythm of walking. In Salvador, I took lessons with Giba Conseção, who insisted that playing caxixi was a form of dancing. If one did not move vigorously while playing – he cautioned me – the inflections would be weak, the articulations insufficient, the accents unfocused. Watching Giba play was indeed like watching a dancer, and imitating him was an athletic undertaking. After an hour my arms were raw and sore, my shirt soaked in sweat.

Upon leaving Bahia, I bought six of Julio’s caxixi as parting gifts for my friends in the Robatto family: two large caxixi for Silvio and Lia, two medium-sized ones for Lucas and Pedro, and two for Pedro and Sandra’s kids, Paulo and Lara. The largest ones looked like skinny buckets and couldn’t be played using traditional wrist motion; instead the player had to hold the handles, allowing gravity to pull the weight of the dried beans earthward until they finally crashed on the gourd bottom.

At my last lesson, Julio brought out a pair of what he called caxixi rodas or ‘wheels’. They appeared glorious, colorful, and rather unwieldy. He grabbed them by the inner ‘spokes’ and swished them around rhythmically. The effect was hypnotizing, but I couldn’t fathom how their donut shape facilitated any technical mastery; their real purpose, it seemed, stemmed from a visual inspiration on his part.

“Has anyone bought a pair of rodas from you, Julio?” I inquired.

“Not yet, but they will,” he replied. “It is such a pleasure to make them,” he added, proudly admiring his creations. “I want a whole family of these, in three or four sizes! Can you imagine?” I wasn’t sure I could, but I enjoyed his fanciful detour; Julio was a dreamer.

Four years later I returned to Bahia, this time for a residency at the Fundação Sacatar in Itaparica. One weekend morning I took the ferry-boat across the bay and decided to stop by Julio’s house to visit. I had originally intended to take the bus, but I became worried that – in trying to negotiate the intricate public transit system of Salvador – I would wind up in some remote favela, so I decided to walk instead. I remembered that Julio lived on one of the narrow stairway/streets snaking up a hill overlooking the Dique de Tororó. From the main road I squinted to identify the recessed entrance, and began scaling the crumbling steps.

After several flights I arrived at his house, rapped on the door, and waited. I had taken a rather big gamble, not having the slightest idea whether he would be at home, or even in town. Standing on the threshold, I glanced behind me toward the street. Mangy stray cats prowled the alleys, flies circled, curious children peeked out from behind cracked doors, old women swept the sidewalk, eying me suspiciously as snatches of pagode and samba de roda crackled over transistor radios. I knocked again with greater urgency.

Salvador had changed; it was noisier, more crowded, more polluted, more rushed. Unfinished construction projects dotted the cityscape. During the past few years Brazil had been benefitting from an unprecedented economic boom. It was proudly boasting one of the fastest ’developing’ economies, ascending along with China, India, and – to some extent – Russia. But Julio’s neighborhood had not changed; the Brazilian economic miracle was passing it by.

I knocked again and waited in silence for a while, then I heard a faint stirring inside, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Footsteps reluctantly made their way toward the front of the house; the door creaked open, and a slight, wiry-framed man with long dreadlocks peered out.

“Julio!” I said. “Como vai?”

He blinked in unrecognition for a few moments, then a slow smile crept across his face and he emerged from the house to embrace me. “Deriki!” he proclaimed. “Faz muito tempo! Tudo bem?”

We exchanged greetings, and after a couple of minutes he grew visibly excited. “Deriki, venha comigo…eu gostaria te mostrar alguma coisa…” He motioned for me to come into the house. I stepped in and my eyes adjusted to the shadow. Julio had dragged an enormous caxixi across the floor and into the daylight. It was the size of a small child, about three feet in height. Other than that, it looked identical to the regular, handheld kind. I probably appeared stunned, gawking at this bizarre creature the way a guinea-pig-owner might stare at a capybara. It looked like a mutant percussive strain – absurd, yet quietly proclaiming its own territory on the floor nearby, justifying itself via its mere grandiose existence.

Julio was beaming. “Boa, não é?” he said, reddening slightly as he noticed the startled expression on my face. Yes, it was indeed beautiful, but this entity was far too large to imagine actually playing, and I posed the inevitable question – one which I felt sure he had been asked before – “Claro que sim… mas… como tocar?”

His countenance turned earnest and he replied – somewhat defensively – “Of course it can be played! I just have to lift it a little…” I watched, bemused, as Julio heaved the gargantuan caxixi into the air. It crashed back to the ground a second later with a percussive CRUNCH. Not the most elegant rhythmic device, but at least it made an impressive noise. “You see?” he boasted breathlessly. “A robust sound! And the scale is proportional in every way to the tiny ones.”

I cast a quick glance at the myriad small caxixi stacked on his shelf. The huge specimen was indeed a mirror replica of its miniature relative, but what of its utility? What musician would possibly want a shaker of such size, more akin to a piece of vintage furniture than a musical instrument?

“Dereki, what is beautiful to me is the form,” he said thoughtfully, as if in response to my unarticulated musings. “And this one is just a protótipo. The real one is in the back room. I need you to help me, because I can’t lift it alone.” I grinned, anticipating the next bizarre chapter, and followed him to the inner chamber. There it was, resting in the shadowy corner: the mother of all caxixi. Standing nearly six feet tall, the Amazon entity – fashioned from wicker, and filled with dried beans – sported a flattened gourd bottom, like the others.

Julio wore a broad smile. “Here, let’s bring her outside for some air.” The two of us dragged the giant caxixi onto the landing. Several curious children gathered cautiously near the doorstep, but were promptly shooed away by a watchful woman nearby. Before I could inquire, Julio remarked to me, “Now, I have no doubt that this can be played; I just need to figure out how…” We tried to lift it, first separately, then together, to no avail. I had a clear sense that this caxixi would never shake, except perhaps in an earthquake.

After several tries we gave up and Julio began fussing with a tiny crack in the gourd base. Somewhat guardedly, I said, “Julio, I think – perhaps – these should be in an gallery. They’re not really…exactly… musical instruments, you know?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending. “A gallery?” he echoed, seeming to contemplate the thought. I wasn’t actually sure if he knew what I meant by a gallery; maybe I had used the wrong word.

"Exposiçao?" I tried, tentatively.

He suddenly burst out laughing. “How can you think that? Dereki, Just imagine how this music will sound. It will be tremendous, awesome!” He stood back and savored his work. “I have always wanted to make caxixi this size, but I was…frightened. And for a long time, I didn’t feel sure enough in my technique. But now! Now that I have finally built one, I think that it is perhaps the most perfect thing I have created.”

I marveled at the huge shaker, speechless. At what point, I wondered, had Julio’s work morphed from instrument-making into sculpture? Had the transition occurred at the juncture when form became detached from function? The tricky issue was that Julio himself did not distinguish between these two aspects of his craft. From his perspective, he remained foremost a maker of musical instruments. Defining his creation primarily as an art-object was unthinkable – an utter diminishment that would rob it of its raison d’être.

Then again, perhaps it was a bona fide hybrid. Julio had smashed a functional boundary and was ushering a traditional, utilitarian practice into fresh and unknown territory. I applauded that bravery and felt elated for him, but I also sensed that his blissful undertaking would be an isolated journey that peers would likely ridicule and – at best – deem incomprehensible. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed kids gaping and snickering in the street. I looked back at Julio, cleaning cobwebs off his monster caxixi. On a dusty, boiling day, on a dingy streetcorner near the Dique de Tororó, I felt that I was witnessing the mysterious, lonely rebirth of art.

A mighty wind: My first commission

2009-05-17T15:31:00.005-05:00

I received my first paid commission in the Spring of 1990, when I was 22 years old. My friend Jane had invited me up to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend, where she was visiting some acquaintances. Our host was a gregarious, retired businessman named William Barron. We sat down for lunch on Sunday and upon hearing that I was a composer, Mr. Barron confessed a long-held wish.

“I’ve always wanted to commission a talented young composer,” he announced, chewing voraciously. “Like a young Leonard Bernstein, you know?”

“Yup!” I said. Actually I knew almost nothing about Bernstein’s life, but I had played a some of his music – the clarinet sonata, the overture to Candide, the 'Cool' dance from West Side Story (on the piano) – and I’d seen a couple of his Young People’s Concerts broadcast on TV; he seemed like a pretty impressive figure.

“…A spanking new march,” he continued. “It’d be called the Barron March.” He paused momentarily to frame the imaginary title, then resumed munching. “Either for my daughter’s wedding or my funeral,” he chuckled, between mouthfuls. “Whichever comes first. You know?” I nodded profusely, not exactly sure how to respond. “You could do a march, right?” he asked earnestly. “Jane says you’re a very talented guy.”

Of course I could do that, I thought confidently. The medium was utterly familiar to me. In fact I had already composed a piece for my high school band, a short variation on the Hebrew hymn Ani Ma Amin. In any case, I had played dozens of marches over the years and knew the form inside and out: first strain, second strain, trio….

“Sure,” I said. “You mean like a Sousa march?”

“No, heavens no, not a Sousa march!” He waved away the thought in mid-bite. “Something classier. You know, a serious piece. Tell you what, I’ll pay you five hundred bucks – a hundred up front and the rest when you deliver the piece. Whaddaya say?”

Five hundred bucks! I was speechless. My heart pounded with excitement. After twelve years of toiling for the love of the art, I was actually going to be paid to write music! I had finally made it. I had a patron, just like the composers of yore; Bach had Prince Leopold, Tchaikovsky had Madame von Meck, and now I had Mr. Barron! For the first time in my life I felt like the real thing, not an imitation. I was confident that I could write not just a march, but a great march.

During the drive home to Boston with Jane, I recounted to Mr. Barron’s generous proposition. She raised an eyebrow, keeping her gaze on the road. “Bill can be whimsical,” she said, smiling enigmatically. Jane looked at me. “Is that something you want to write?” she asked pointedly.

I was puzzled by her oddly cynical reaction. To me, his offer had seemed practical, not capricious. After all, he was a businessman who had always wanted to commission a composer; he merely spotted a good opportunity and took it. “Of course!” I replied enthusiastically. “It’s my first real commission! He even wrote up a contract!” I pulled it out to show Jane; it was a short paragraph outlining the terms of the agreement, detailing the $100 payment and $400 balance, signed with a flourish by William Barron.

She glanced at it and nodded. “The Barron March; very impressive!” She grinned. “So do you have any tunes in mind yet?”

“Jeez, gimme a couple of days!” I laughed.

The following day I was back in New York, still on a high and relishing my new life as a professional composer. A month earlier I had returned from Jerusalem, where I had studied orchestration with André Hajdu. It was a grueling experience; every two weeks I would travel to his house for an afternoon-long lesson, and at each meeting he’d send me home with an orchestral score – plus one or two new piano pieces – by a different composer: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Debussy, Grieg, Ives, Ravel, Bartók, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Copland, Messiaen, Hindemith, Milhaud, Kurtag, Ligeti. I was expected to study the score, then bring back my own manuscript of the piano pieces, orchestrated in the said composer’s style; the following lesson Hajdu would dissect my work, indicating where I had succeeded and where I had erred. It was my first experience delving deeply into the orchestral literature, and I loved it.

Now, bolstered by my commission, I felt the imperative to similarly investigate the band repertoire from a conductor’s vantagepoint, studying specific aspects of instrumentational invention and innovation. It was music I knew ad nuseum from a clarinetist’s perspective, but suddenly those old warhorses seemed fresh and bursting with vitality. I delighted in Holst’s command of form and variation in the Chaconne of the First Suite, the odd harmonies and quirky orchestrational choices in Grainger’s Hill Songs, the raw power and emotional arc of Husa’s Music for Prague. I pored over Mark Hindsley’s ingenious arrangements of orchestral chestnuts like Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe Suite and Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. In the process I tackled principles of wind instrumentation, discovering myriad ways in which band writing differed from orchestral: the instruments commonly doubled each other’s melodic lines; the clarinets and flutes effectively replaced the orchestra’s violins; the brass were a more present and malleable force throughout, their role distinct and separate from that of the percussion.

It felt as though I had entered a time machine that transported me back to elementary school band, our austere and exacting director Steve Tupac ambitiously programming transcriptions of Corelli and Handel. My junior high school band director Pat Chodi’s abominable jokes rang in my ears – “You made a mistake? That’s OK, don’t worry about it; I made a mistake too – once!” I flashed back to the days when my high-school band director – Mick Dayo, an idealistic entrepreneur and hopeless lush – arrived like a whirlwind direct from Florida State (not exactly an upward, or even a lateral, career move…). He launched countless impressive and high-budget projects – for example, convincing the superintendent to dispense a small fortune on fundraisers, tours, and spanking new marching band uniforms – even as our school instruments fell apart.

Mr. Dayo’s star burned brightly and quickly; by the end of his second (and final) year, he had become a pale apparition of his former self, depressed and prone to flying into tantrums during rehearsals, after which he would dramatically flee the podium, sequester himself in his office, and drink heavily. These outbursts unfortunately failed to instill the desired spirit of guilt and concentration in the musicians; on the contrary they sparked our more mischievous instincts; armed with a copious reservoir of chutzpah, I would mount the podium, grab the baton, and conduct the remainder of the rehearsal. At last I was standing before the true authority – the full score! No longer was I hopelessly trapped behind a music stand, poking out the 1st clarinet part; it was an enormously liberating, and life-changing, experience.

Finally, in my senior year of high school, arrived the kinder gentler Rob Freeberg, a fine jazz trumpeter who couldn’t have been older than 28. Early on we terrorized and tested him mercilessly, recognizing that he was young and ‘green’, but he swiftly won our respect. Since that time he has greatly elevated the band program – which he still directs to this day – and has become a potent and positive force in Westchester music education.

It was via this colorful crew of band directors that I first encountered the banal but indestructible marches of Clifton Williams, the sweeping works of Alfred Reed, the Russian Christmas Music of Vaclav Nelhybel, the simple and delightful Folk Song Suite of Ralph Vaughan-Williams. During my sophomore year I performed in the New York All-State Band, and I became familiar with experimental works like David Bedford’s impressionistic Sun Paints Rainbows on the Vast Waves, the quintessentially American Chester by William Schuman, and Aaron Copland’s bold Emblems. Many great orchestral works were likewise revealed to me first through band arrangements. Even today I can close my eyes and hear the swelling of euphoniums in Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, the sonorous saxophones in Bach’s D Minor Toccata. I feel as though I’ve played all the virtuosic violin runs in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, when in fact those quicksilver scales – cascading and burbling towards a climax – were realized by a gaggle of clarinetists, dutifully reaping the rewards of years spent endlessly practicing scale passages from Klosé and Baermann étude books. My extensive and visceral knowledge of the great band literature was ready to be mined and tested; an inevitable and potent force had led me towards a noble purpose – engendering the Barron March!

However, I still needed to wrestle with the thorny task of composing a piece appropriate for either a wedding or a funeral. I occupied myself for several days with this tricky problem. My eventual solution was to write an unusual march – one capable of expressing both pathos and grandeur, at once rousing and heartfelt. Suppose, I reasoned, that the piece opened with a plaintive, wistful theme in minor key, then morphed into a brighter melody in major mode in its second strain. As long as that duality of mood was maintained, the piece could move through a plethora of variations and the opposing poles would likely reinforce each other, endowing the march with balance, proportion, and a deeper, more nuanced psychological breadth. In this way, I surmised, the Barron March could be uniquely, gloriously, atypical, remaining true to my artistic intentions while honoring my signed agreement.

I worked on the march steadily through the summer, adding finishing touches in August. I sold my beat-up spinet and bought a Yamaha Clavinova, a state-of-the-art, 24-note polyphonic keyboard with weighted keys. This instrument would allow me to utilize a revolutionary new technological tool – MIDI sequencing – to create a real-time piano reduction of the piece. I input pitch, volume, and rhythmic information into the sequencing program Master Tracks Pro, and I used the Clavinova as a playback device; all this meant that I would be able to let Mr. Barron hear the march. I felt certain he’d be grateful for the chance to listen to a recorded version of his commissioned work, and that he’d admire how I’d deftly wedded both melancholy and triumphant sounds into a unified work.

Before bringing the handwritten manuscript down to the copy shop, I signed the final page, adding the date for posterity. The score was ledger size – 11 by 17 inches – and therefore required a special double-binding: two large black plastic combs, overlapping in the middle, framing the majestic manuscript. I enclosed a cassette tape of my MIDI realization and labeled the box neatly, with proper credentials. With a palpable sense of thrill, relief, and accomplishment, I sealed and posted the oversized, self-addressed, bubble-wrapped envelope to Mr. Barron – registered mail, return receipt requested – along with a cover letter recapping our original agreement (not mentioning the balance due, of course; that would have been ‘gauche’), and detailing my struggle to conceive of and produce a march that embodied such an extended emotional gamut, thanking him for the fascinating assignment and for his faith in my abilities, and looking forward to hearing from him.

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Throughout that whole, hot summer, I had been working in a music store in Manhattan, selling keyboards on commission. I was learning the ropes from a guy who the staff had nicknamed ‘Slick Rick’. Rick could sell anything to anyone, and he took me under his wing, sharing his tried-and-true techniques of convincing customers to purchase musical equipment they didn’t need. Slick Rick trained me to scrutinize and rapidly identify the various types of customer (‘breeds’, he called them): there were timehogs – the dispossessed, lonely people who came in simply to gab all day and never bought anything; gawkers – gullible customers who could be talked up in price; fatcats – rich folks purchasing expensive equipment in order to stoke their egos or appease their spoiled kids; geekteases – gearheads who used our showroom to try out stuff they would subsequently buy cheaper elsewhere, and so on. Each required a specific regimen of treatment, but the key to success – he impressed upon me – was steering customers towards items with a higher ‘spiff’, or commission paid to the salesman, even if it was an inferior product.

“See this keyboard?” he would rap on a sparkling new Casio VZ-10M synthesizer. “Fantastic machine, truth be told. 16-voice polyphony! Beats the DW-8000 hands down,” he would insist, gesturing dismissively towards the inferior Korg. “But the markup? Forget it, dude!” He would lean towards me, intoning gravely, “Spiff on Casio is D,” as if ‘D’ signified death or devastation. Then he would make an about-face, turning to the hapless Korg with mock reverence, stroking the gaudy and unwieldy digital display, and like a whirlwind he would launch into stunning demos of the DW-8000’s most attractive and flashy features.

Rick liked me, but frequently referred to me a ‘lost cause’, rolling his eyes conspicuously as he spied me enumerating to customers the virtues of such spiff-less items as Roland R-8 drum machines, Ensoniq ESQ-1 synths, and Akai S-1000 samplers. I was mortified at the prospect of selling merchandise under misleading premises, and with this warped view I was doomed in the world of quick sales.

“What if they realize it sucks and return it?” I would posit, guiltily.

“They won’t!” he would fire back, exasperated. “Believe me, dude, they learn to like what they buy! All those questions they ask are just stalling tactics, or are based on irrelevant shit some nerdy friend told them. These folks don’t know their heads from their asses, equipment-wise; they NE-VER return stuff! And if they DO bring it back, you know what?” A sly smile would creep across his face and his voice would hush slightly. “It doesn’t matter…the thing is, you still don’t lose the spiff; once that box is out the door, the cut is yours!”

“But what if they get customer feels cheated and gets mad?” I would whisper back anxiously. I mean, it’s kind of like tricking them…”

“Oh my god. Go back to music school, dude!” He would throw his hands into the air despairingly and stomp away. “That’s where you belong!”

******************************************

Two weeks or so had passed since sending the march, and I still hadn’t heard back from Mr. Barron. It seemed likely that he would be away; I’d probably have to be patient. But with my abysmal sales record at the store I was looking forward to receiving my $400 balance. I called Jane, thinking she might know details about the Barrons’ schedule.

“Hm,” she said, “I’m fairly sure they’re in town. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to listening yet…”

“I think he’s going to dig the march, once he’s checked it out,” I ventured, smugly.

“Well, you've certainly put in a great deal of work,” she said. “I’ll try and prompt them to get in touch,” she promised.

August turned into September; cooler winds were prevailing. I had realized that Slick Rick was probably correct about my future, so I’d begun applying to graduate schools. I had also started a new job, teaching music to emotionally disturbed kids. This new employment paid even less than my old job at the music store, and I was therefore more eager than ever to claim my 400 bucks. There was still no word from the Barrons, so I phoned Jane again. We talked for a few minutes, and then somewhat awkwardly I remarked, “I suppose you haven’t heard anything yet about my march…”

“No,” she said apologetically. “I spoke with Amy and…well, come to think of it, she didn’t bring it up. Wait a second…” she broke off, and returned to the phone a half-minute later. “Here’s their number.” She read the digits to me. “Why not contact them yourself?”

The next day was Saturday. Thinking that the weekend might be a more ideal time to reach the Barrons, I called that afternoon. The phone rang and rang; no answer. I tried later in the day; still nothing. That night, I sat awake in bed, perturbed, wondering why they hadn’t even mentioned the piece to Jane. I knew that the package had been delivered; three days after sending it I had received a return receipt. A terrible thought occurred to me; what if the cassette had been poor quality? Perhaps the tape had unspooled and was unlistenable (it had happened to me once before). That potentiality and many others troubled me. I tossed and turned and fretted over various drastically negative possibilities, and after a several obsessive hours I fell asleep, exhausted.

I tried calling again the next morning, then once again late that afternoon. The phone rang ten or more times; I was about to hang up, but suddenly there was a soft click. “Hello, who is this?” inquired a tiny soprano voice.

“Mrs. Barron?” I inquired eagerly.

“Yes?”

“Oh, I’m so glad to speak with you. This is Derek Bermel.”

There was a short, baffled silence. The connection was not very good. “I’m sorry, who?”

“Derek Ber-MEL,” I said a little slower, accenting the last syllable of my surname. I was used to this; most people who read my name pronounced it BUR-mul or BRE-mul.

“I think you must have dialed the wrong number,” she replied edgily. How did you get this number?”

“Oh, Jane gave it to me. I’m Jane’s friend, the one you met last summer, the…musician.” I paused and thought that I could detect the faint sound of Cape Cod crickets chirping. “The composer,” I continued. “I wrote a march…”

“Oh yes,” she said, with distant recognition. “Nice to hear from you.”

Another crackling silence ensued, which I gladly filled. “Yes, I, uh, I sent a score – I mean…the sheet music…with a tape. Did you receive it, by any chance? I mean, I think you received it; I mailed it to your husband…”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Thank you, he did get it. But he’s not available right now. He’s a bit busy…”

Another awkward silence. I began to feel queasy. A thought occurred to me; perhaps he was ill. That would explain things. But wouldn’t Jane have told me? Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know.

“I’m sure he is,” I said. “Um...can I call back some time?”

“Yes…or, well…” she stammered, haltingly. Barely able to hear her voice, I jammed the phone up against my ear. A slightly longer, more agonizing silence ensued. The static was deafening. I suddenly thought of another possibility; suppose their marriage was problematic, and they were estranged. What if he was having an affair, and she received my package and threw it away in disgust? But Mrs. Barron broke in, dispelling that fleeting notion. “Hold the line a second. He’s inside; let me see if I can find him.”

An interminable silence followed, seemingly lasting for weeks. Something seemed very wrong. I began to regret sending the Barrons a MIDI version of the piece. Perhaps the recording was too stiff-sounding, or the cassette quality had been rotten. In my mind, I heard Slick Rick's voice, admonishing me, “MIDI sucks! Use your chops to demonstrate; it’s way more impressive and distracting for the customers.” Naturally, I was confident that Mr. Barron possessed a more sophisticated and discriminating musical aptitude than my keyboard customers, yet even so, perhaps I ought to have played him the piece live, at the piano; it might have appeared more personal. As I cycled through the potential pitfalls of MIDI realizations, a gruff voice emerged from the crackles. “Hello? Hello? Derek?”

“Oh, hello Mr. Barron!” I said in the most cheerful tone I could muster.

“Derek! Now listen, what the dickens is this monstrous thing you sent me? This is awful, God-awful stuff! It’s – I don’t know the technical term – dissonant?...ugly-sounding? How could you possibly think this might be played at a wedding? Or even a funeral, for that matter? It’s…cacophonous! And it doesn’t sound anything like a march.” He laughed out loud, presumably at the thought of the unintentionally cacophonous wedding/funeral event. “What I wanted was something grand-sounding. We talked about that, don’t you remember? Anyway, what am I supposed to do with this chintzy piano recording?” He snickered a bit more while the line crackled.

During this soliloquy I experienced such a wild rush of emotions – shame, indignation, incredulity, despair – that I could hardly summon any breath to respond. My voice shook with an audible tremor as I attempted to solidify my thoughts. “Mr. Barron-” I began, half-choking back a sob of wounded pride, “I worked very hard, I mean, I wrote this… you wanted… it was difficult to write something that could be… you asked for either a funeral or a wedding piece…”

“ME-LO-DY,” he interrupted, emphasizing each syllable. “I wanted a march with a melody that a person can identify and sing.” He continued, a bit patronizingly, but with more empathy, “Don’t get me wrong, you’re obviously very talented, but for God’s sake, couldn't you take out some of those ear-splitting sounds and add some real honest-to-God tunes? Your piece doesn’t contain a shred of melody. Didn’t they teach you how to write one at Yale?”

I searched frantically for an appropriate answer. What was he talking about? Had I sent the wrong cassette tape? My march had a very clear melody, several in fact. It was the most tuneful composition I had written since high school. But in this piece I had attempted – and, I felt, accomplished – something much more sophisticated and subtle; through a slow process of variation, two main themes seamlessly converged – one in minor key, one in major – how could I explain this to him? “Mr. Barron… I mean…there are melodies are in there… Maybe they’re not quite as perceptible as–”

“Well I can’t hear them,” he snapped. “Look, Derek, I wanted a real rousing march. Do you know Battle Hymn of the Republic? Like that one! Now that’s a real march, with a fantastic melody.”

“But – Battle Hymn – that’s…” I broke off, completely flummoxed, took a deep breath, and began again. “I asked you if you wanted a Sousa march, and you insisted that you didn’t like – that you wanted something more interesting…a young Leonard Bernstein…”

“Interesting, yes! Like a good melody,” he added curtly. “Look, I’m not a music scholar or anything, but to me a strong, clear melody is at the foundation of music. Haven’t you heard West Side Story?”

“Sure,” I began. “But Bernstein also wrote–”

“Now, Derek,” he interrupted with annoyance, “I don’t have time to debate this all day. Here’s what we’ll do. You rewrite this for organ – take out some of those intolerable harmonies, and please add at least a couple of tunes that a regular person can recognize – and we’ll call it a deal. I really would have preferred a recording of a real band, but at this point I suppose organ would do.”

“…organ?” I echoed, weakly, at a loss for words.

“Right, a pipe organ!” he said, heartened. "You know, Derek, I’m actually glad you called to work things out. When I first heard your…thing... I must admit, I was a bit miffed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! Not that I don’t appreciate your – uh – experimentation, but I don’t like being taken for a guinea pig. In any case, I think we’re clear on things now, right?”

“Yeah…uh…ok…Mr. Barron…if you don’t mind, let me just think about all this. I’ll…I’ll call you back soon.”

“Don’t think too long! Just get writing, like Lenny would’ve done! C’mon!” He laughed heartily. “I’m sure it’ll be great! Looking forward to it, Derek…bye!”

“Do you think the…” I began, but before I could finish the thought I heard a sharp click. I stood with the phone to my ear for another couple of seconds until the line went dead.

Battle Hymn of the Republic? I couldn’t fathom this in the least. What the hell? I had misunderstood the whole assignment, right from the start, and now the puzzle pieces were falling into place. All Barron had wanted was a pompous melody or two, backed up by a few banal chords, capped off with a cheesy flourish at the end. Meanwhile there I was, attempting to weave an intricate tapestry, agonizing over details. Now I was back at square one, with a new assignment to write an organ march, of all depressing things. But now the challenge and the ebullience I had felt before were absent; there was only a seething sizzle in my gut. My first ‘commission’. That had sure turned out great.

It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been so intimidated and surprised that I’d forgotten to ask for my four hundred dollars. During our conversation, money had been the farthest thing from my mind, but now my upcoming rent loomed like a vampiric presence. I felt simultaneously humiliated and ripped off. Why hadn’t I stood up for myself? What was I afraid of? I plunked down on my bed, dejected. Maybe I wasn’t really cut out for this composer thing. Maybe a freelance composer had to be a self-employed businessman with a killer, commercial instinct. A real composer might have anticipated what Mr. Barron would want, might have known how to ask the right questions initially, might have gauged his intentions more accurately.

The phone rang. I stared at it, ringing insistently. It was probably Mr. Barron calling back, I thought. Perhaps he realized that he had been overly harsh, even boorish, ignorant. Maybe this time he would offer payment – even a little extra cash as an incentive – to write the organ piece. Then, after some thought, I might agree to the new terms, explaining that it would require a great deal of effort but that I was willing to do my part to ensure his satisfaction. I summoned some courage and picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said, in a measured tone.

“D-rock!!” a familiar voice cried. It was my college roommate George.

“Hey G,” I said, ever-so-slightly disappointed, but relieved.

“What’s shakin’, Beethoven? How’s the great composer?”

“Uh, not so great, in either sense of the word. You?”

“Aw man, I have had a crazy day. Three clients with crises; I’m trying to manage everything at once. As Stevie would say, ‘Living Just Enough for the City.’ You know, Rock?” He heaved an audible, satisfied sigh. George was an entrepreneur, who – shortly after graduation – plunged into the record business and founded his own management company. A natural businessman with a keen musical ear and a flair for cutting a deal, he worked with both bands and producers, and at age 23 was already knee-deep in the mix of the New York indy music scene. “What’s going on with you, homes?”

“Well, I finished off a march. You remember that guy I told you about who commissioned it?”

“Yeah, Barron! The Barron March,” he intoned with mock grandeur. “I thought you finished that one a while ago. What else you been doing?”

“Well, yeah, I finished it, but…the thing is, I hadn’t heard back from him-”

“Why not? Did you deliver the goods?”

“Yeah, well, I guess I did, but they were the wrong goods. I wrote what I thought was a really good march; I mean, it WAS a really good march. But it was nuanced, you know? Not typical; it was layered. It was supposed to be either for his daughter’s wedding or-”

“Yeah, yeah, or his funeral, I remember. What a wacky assignment! I’m sure whatever you came up with was great. So, you sent it, and…?”

“Right away. I sent it registered mail, weeks ago.”

“And you never heard back from him?”

“No, so I finally called him. And he got the package.” I paused. “But he hated it,” I admitted, feeling oddly embarrassed. “Or maybe he doesn’t exactly hate it…but he doesn’t understand it. I dunno. He wants me to do something else.”

“Did you get paid?” he asked in a flat tone unfamiliar to me.

I shuddered. “Well, I got paid the first hundred bucks. Before I wrote it. But I didn’t really ask about money this time, because he was… because it was so… awkward. You know?” I realized that I was blushing slightly and my head felt hot. “I guess I’m stupid, but I never figured he wouldn’t LIKE the piece. I mean, on some level I don’t really care; he obviously doesn’t know the first thing about music. He said he wanted a march like Battle Hymn of the Republic –”

“D-rock, you can’t go out like that. Do you have a contract?”

“Yeah, but he –”

“What’s the balance? What does he owe you?”

“Uh, let’s see…about four hundred bucks.”

“About, or exactly?” I could hear George scribbling something on a pad. “Look homes, he can request anything he wants, but first you gotta get paid.”

“Well, it’s true…you’re right. I should get paid. But…shit! It feels weird to ask him for the rest when he hates the piece.”

“Come on, this guy is a multi-millionaire who lived down the block from Teddy Kennedy, and you’re a starving artist!”

“Well… I dunno… maybe I should just write him a new march – this new organ piece he wants or whatever – and then he’ll feel happier about the whole thing.”

“D-rock, it’s not about happiness; we’re gonna get you paid. What’s this guy’s address? I’m drafting a letter right now…”

“G-- I mean… he’s a friend of a friend…”

In the earpiece I could hear another phone ringing incessantly at George’s office. “I gotta pick this up, D. Wait a sec.” He slammed down the phone.

“Hello?” I heard him ask into the other phone. “Nope, I can’t guarantee that. Sorry, can you hold on? Thanks.”

He picked up my phone again. “Find that contract from Barron and fax it to me today, all right?”

“It’s just a letter, like it just outlines–”

“Is it signed? By both parties?”

“Yeah, but-”

“Fax it to me today. Dude, I gotta take this call. See you later. Don’t forget!”

“OK.” I hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Right, the contract. I dug into my filing cabinet and pulled it out. There it was: the signed paper, written in Mr. Barron’s eloquent hand, acknowledging receipt of $100 and requesting delivery – before the end of the summer – of a ‘march for band, entitled the Barron March, suitable for performance at either a wedding or a funeral’. I shoved it in my backpack, shut the front door, and began unlocking my bike from the ‘no parking’ sign on the street outside my apartment.

So here was the end of my triumphant story, I thought; my manager buddy ekes my paltry commission money out of a rich guy who hates my music. Is this what it’s all about, I wondered? How pathetic that this incident would mark the onset of my career as a freelance composer! The thought of Jane momentarily flashed through my head, and I considered how embarrassing the whole scenario might turn become. I stopped fiddling with the bike lock, feeling conflicted and uncomfortable. I should just let this go, I realized. Let it all go. No amount of money was worth alienating my friend. I turned around and headed back to the stoop and climbed the steps up to my apartment, picked up the phone again, and called George.

“Management!” his voice boomed.

“Hey G-"

“’Sup D-rock?”

“Look, I really, really appreciate all your help. But… I mean the guy hates my music. And he’s a friend of a friend. I just – I don’t want to take his money. Really, it’s OK.” I paused. “I didn’t write it for the money anyway. Seriously, G.”

George sighed. There was a short silence. “Why did you write it, then?” he asked gently.

I thought for a few seconds. “I don’t know. Because – it was exciting to get the commission; I liked the idea that someone would pay me to do what I love to do anyway. It made me feel – important, I guess. But once I started writing that march, it became more than a random, goofy assignment; it was a challenge. And boy was I glad that he DIDN'T request a Sousa march!” The situation seemed suddenly funny, and I chuckled. “You know, maybe Barron is right; maybe my piece is bizarre-sounding. I mean, to a traditional ear. But it’s beautiful - to my weird ears anyway. You know, it really doesn’t sound like any other march I've heard.” I felt a twinge of pride, but realized I was babbling a bit, and stopped talking. I could detect the sound of the printer whirring in George’s office.

“OK, D, I get it,” George said quietly. But fax me that contract anyway, all right? Just so I have a copy on file here.”

“Sure, man. Hey, thanks again, G, for listening, and everything. I hope you understand. You’re a good friend.”

“No prob. Speak to you soon, D-rock.”

I felt immediately relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted from my mind. I shook my head. Then I climbed onto my bike, headed over to the copy shop, faxed the letter to George, and stopped on the way back for a slice of pizza.

******************************************

Two weeks later, autumn was in full swing; the air was crisp and dry and leaves were beginning to fall from the trees. I returned home from work to find an embossed envelope in the mailbox; there was no return address. I ripped it open without paying much attention, assuming it was junk mail. Inside was a check for $400, signed by Amy Barron. I looked inside the torn envelope again. No letter was enclosed, but at the bottom of the check was scrawled, ‘balance of payment for march.’

George.

I fingered the weighty envelope; it was the same richly textured, tactile paper on which the contract had been written. Glancing down at my hand, I realized that I was holding very expensive stationery. I stared at the check absent-mindedly for a few seconds, put it hastily in my pocket, hopped on my bike, and began riding towards the bank.

It's About Time

2008-11-21T17:30:00.004-05:00

To be precise, two years since I’ve written here, an unfortunate confluence of perfectionism, overcommitment, medical emergency, political angst, and writer’s block. John Zorn pulled me out of the latter to write a piece for his latest issue of Arcana. Perhaps I’ll post that essay at a later date; you can check out the beautifully published volume, with writings by Chrisian Marclay, Sean Lennon, Gavin Bryars, Brad Lubman, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, Olga Neuwirth, Laeticia Sonami, and many others, here. Through these two years I have been sketching ideas, and hopefully some will come to fruition over the next few months. In the meantime, a reminiscence about my trip to China last year.

********************************************

“Be prepared for something unforeseen to happen,” a Chinese musician-friend had cautioned me, with a smirk. And so it was with a bemused sense of trepidation that I embarked on my trip to the Beijing Modern Music Festival last May to perform my clarinet concerto Voices. I had been invited by Ye Xiao-gang, director of the festival, at the behest of my colleague Chen Yi. Prior to my departure from the U.S., in response to a frantic request from the orchestra management, I had hastily packed several items – castanets, a wa-wa mute, and a flexatone – lent to me by generous acquaintances. Several of the instruments in my score were not commonly owned, or even known, by smaller Chinese orchestras.

After ten hours spent at Newark Airport, including two flight cancellations, I finally boarded the plane and arrived in Beijing at 1AM, only to have my bankcard rudely swallowed by the local ATM. A driver arrived to transport me to Tianjin, a city located about two hours away from the capital. The midnight trip was a grey, polluted blur. My mind was enveloped in a groggy fog after two half-days of travel, and a steady stream of industrial, covered trucks – delivering goods from the ports of the China Sea to Beijing – clogged the highway, belching soot. Bland billboards loomed from the roadside and a busy whirr of construction persisted through the night.

Following a 4am check-in at the hotel, I collapsed into deep, two-hour sleep and was awoken for breakfast. Walking into the 9am rehearsal, I conjured some Zen, expecting a number of ‘issues’ to surface. “A great deal will depend on the conductor,” my friend had warned. “You’ll need someone who understands American rhythms.”

The young, energetic conductor Yang Li greeted me upon my arrival. To my surprise, he spoke English quite well. “I’m glad you are here!” he said excitedly. “We have already been rehearsing for several days!” I learned that he was the son of the famous choral conductor Yang Hongnian whose China Children’s Choir was world-renowned for their skill; training together from a tender age, the singers remained with the group throughout their teenage years, often into their twenties. Yang Li had studied conducting in Stuttgart, and German words were sprinkled throughout his animated conversation. “Do not worry if the orchestra sounds imperfect,” he assured me with a wink. “They are still getting used to your jazzy flavor. We will concentrate on your piece all day today and tomorrow.”

The first reading of my concerto was quite rough; many of the difficult wind passages seemed downright shaky, and huge swaths of the music were missing. But the string section held their own, and the principal winds attacked their parts in a determined – if occasionally stiff – manner. Yang Li spoke encouragingly to the orchestra, then turned to me and pointed at his score. “This is the hardest part,” he announced gravely. “Where you write ‘Bebop.’ They’re not getting the rhythm accurately. Go over there and play it with them.” He urged me toward the woodwind section.

All eyes were on me. I hesitated. It seemed somehow presumptuous to step into their space; as the soloist, I would be crossing an invisible boundary. Yang Li persisted, “You must show them how to play the first movement. Much better than if I do it! You are American; this is your music.” So I stepped in front of the woodwinds and executed a blindingly fast two-bar passage of 64th notes. The whole orchestra immediately burst into applause.

Please,” he entreated, ignoring the clapping. “Once more.”

“OK…” I said, moving back toward my normal spot.

“No, stay where you are,” he gestured. “In the orchestra. Play with them, in the section!”

So I stood next to the principal clarinet player and we all played together. It sounded pretty awful.

“Play it again,” Yang Li said. We did.

“Again.” We repeated it.

“Again.”

Steadily, almost imperceptibly, the two-bar phrase solidified.

“Now Derek, play it slowly, very slowly.” I did it, stressing the non-‘ghost’ notes.

He spoke to the orchestra in Mandarin. “I explain to them what you are doing. How you emphasize some notes and swallow others. Play again.” I did, exaggerating the syncopation.

He barked a command to the orchestra, then turned to me. “Now we all play in the slower tempo.” Remarkably, the entire wind section eked out a slightly clumsy but discernable swing.

“Again!” he hollered. They played.

“Now a little faster...” Yang Li was no longer conducting, but allowing me to lead from my post, standing in front of the wind section.

“Again,” he insisted, with a tiny smirk. And so it went, for at least an hour, Yang Li breaking down the movement into small phrases and imploring me to demonstrate.

During a moment of inspiration, I unearthed a potent metaphor for describing to the musicians my swooping, gliding musical rhetoric: Peking Opera. It seemed like an apt touchstone with which to cross the cultural divide; Peking Opera prominently features exaggerated vocal gestures via high soprano and falsetto singers, deliberately caricaturizing speech for dramatic purposes. Yang Li appreciated the stylistic analogy and echoed it repeatedly when explaining my piece to the orchestra; we had found our Rosetta Stone.

In this way, the musicians slowly grew comfortable with the gestural language of my work. The evolution was especially palpable during the breaks; the principal cellist winked slyly as he bowed glissandi imitating slides and groans, the first clarinet player parroted my licks, the trombonists practiced funky inflections, fall-offs, and ‘doits’, the trumpeters rehearsed syncopations and ‘ghost’ notes, and the hornists perfected their rips. During the second movement – which is based on an Irish folk song – the concertmaster riffed on a fiddle lick and the piccolo player painstakingly deconstructed the 'keening' grace notes in her solo, a low, melancholy echo of the clarinet melody. After much practice, the pianist was able to create a subtle, resonant thump with a soft mallet on the strings, and the harpist achieved a sultry portamento pedaling. I had been worried about whether the bass guitar player would possess any knowledge of slap techniques, but to my delight, he turned out to be a virtuoso; he gigged regularly in a Tianjin funk band and, though never having played electric bass with an orchestra, he quickly learned to negotiate the complex task of following a conductor while grooving with the rhythm section.

Given their lack of resources, the percussionists were particularly noteworthy in their dedication to realizing my orchestrational nuances. Lacking an extra drumhead available for puncture, they set about searching for creative solutions to simulate a ‘lion’s roar’ using timpani. Two squeaky rubber ‘Hello Kitty’ toys were ingeniously substituted for a cuica. A makeshift vibraslap was constructed for the final bars of the slow movement. The drum set player memorized a lengthy 7/8 funk groove so that he could more easily watch the conductor. And the entire section teamed up to find a tub deep enough to immerse a large gong in water, auditioning three or four containers before a vessel of appropriate size was located.

By the end of the first afternoon we had already rehearsed for double the amount of time that an equivalent new piece would have received with a Western orchestra. It was a long working day for the musicians: 9am-5pm, punctuated by a few half-hour breaks, during which they practiced, smoked, or played ping-pong. By concert time the following evening, we had clocked three days of rehearsal on my concerto alone (three other contemporary works were also featured on the program: by Ching Wen Chen, Zhang Lida, and Jing Xiang). Yang Li appeared thoughtful. "Voices will be pretty good tonight in Tianjin,” he mused, “but it will improve greatly by the time we perform in Beijing, because we will rehearse in-between the concerts too.” He smiled impishly. “They don’t do that in the West.”

What drove the relaxed, devoted, and optimistic atmosphere that permeated the rehearsal process? Part of it was Yang Li’s disarmingly casual, yet focused, manner; but the copious time allotted for the musicians to familiarize themselves with my compositional language was undoubtedly a vital factor. In the States it is rare to receive more than two or three rehearsals to hone a contemporary piece (and the scenario is often even more hectic when playing standard repertoire; I’ve performed the Mozart – and even the Copland – concerto without a full dress rehearsal). In most of Europe the situation is not much better; in England it is probably worse. By contrast, in Tianjin the generous amount of rehearsal time allowed a chamber music sensibility to prevail. Rather than relying on sight-reading chops, the players melded together into an ensemble, internalizing my musical gestures on a vastly more intimate level. I gazed with admiration at these dedicated musicians, earning less money for a week of work than most Western orchestral players make at one rehearsal.

I recall reading about the tumultuous history of Aaron Copland’s Short Symphony. Deemed unplayable – and subsequently abandoned – by Stokowski in Philadelphia and by Koussevitsky in Boston, the work had to wait for its premiere until Chavez's orchestra in Mexico City allotted ten rehearsals. It wasn’t performed in the States for another decade. Imagine the possibilities were a bold commitment undertaken today by major Western orchestras to prepare, perform, and record challenging and unorthodox new works. Yes, it would require time. And time - in the West - is often equated with money. But the rewards would be priceless, and timeless.

Deck the Apartment

2006-12-25T00:56:00.000-05:00

This week I moved to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn, much less trendy and crowded than Williamsburg had become during the nine years I’d lived there. I finished my move on the last day of Chanukah, and my old landlady asked about the new place. She had never heard of Kensington, on the opposite side of Prospect Park. “Sounds like it’s in London or something,” she observed. “What kind of a neighborhood is it?”

“Pretty nice; working class. Mostly families.”

She eyed me meaningfully. “But I mean…what kind – ”

“Mostly Muslim, I guess…my landlord is Pakistani, with five kids.” I lugged an air conditioner out to the curb.

She raised an eyebrow. “Terrorists?” she asked with a smile, half-joking.

“Probably,” I grimaced, carrying out two African xylophones.

Later that evening I made my way home from Manhattan. It was one of those grotesque Christmas shopping days, and I unfortunately had been compelled to run an errand near Herald Square; the blare of holiday commercialism was frenzied and unrelenting, and the crowds moved with a manic urgency that bordered on mass hysteria. I ducked hastily into the subway.

Half an hour later, Brooklyn was an island of calm, like a distant universe. On the way home from the Q train, the soft, mysterious strains of the muezzin’s song floated towards me through the unseasonably warm air. My new landlord, Abdul, was in the vestibule, preparing to leave for the night; he drove for a car service from evening until early morning.

“Everything O.K. upstairs?” he inquired. It was still my first week; boxes and suitcases stood in disarray around my apartment, contents spilling haphazardly out onto the floor.

“Yeah, fine, thanks. I’m still getting organized.”

“I heard you playing music up there yesterday.”

My heart leapt unceremoniously into my gullet. “Too loud?” I shot back, automatically and defensively. Musicians in urban areas, myself included, can possess terrible – and often accurate – paranoia that our neighbors are conspiring to impair necessary noisemaking by imposing horrifyingly strict limitations on our creative outbursts. And the urban composer may adopt a bizarrely hypocritical mindset; we must be free to make as much sound as we want, yet those around us should exist in virtual silence, as their noise will bother us. What a conundrum of a profession!

And now the inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived; I felt the clear danger. But I had been through it before, and this time I felt prepared to fight back. I had taken pains to make Abdul aware that I was a professional musician; I had even specified which instruments I played, to ensure that there would be no ‘unpleasant surprises’. But of course, the best laid plans have little to do with reality. I steeled myself for the unpleasant and awkward conversation that I knew was forthcoming. It would begin with Abdul’s gentle ‘suggestion’ that I alter my practice schedule, and end in a full-scale assault on my music-making routine. I dug in my heels and took in a deep breath, waiting for his reply.

“Too loud? No, no, not too loud at all,” he smiled. “I like music. It’s nice to hear someone playing music around here.”

I blinked. “Oh.” I stared at him incredulously, especially since I had been memorizing John Adams’ clarinet concerto, practicing the same lick over and over, laboriously adding short musical segments.

“It must be a difficult life, making money from your music,” he ventured.

Still flummoxed from the virtual conflict I had constructed, I racked my brain to figure out what he was hinting at. “Well,” I began, choosing my words carefully, “it’s not so easy, but I love doing it. It’s nice when you love what you do for a living. Do you like driving?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“It’s not bad,” he surmised. One of his kids ran up the staircase and hovered coyly nearby. Abdul muttered something kindly to him in Urdu, and the boy drifted a bit closer.

“I suppose finances are tough with five kids,” I offered.

He turned to me and smiled again. “Not so bad. And I like having these young ones around. There’s always a child somewhere nearby, do you notice? Never a dull moment!” He mussed the boy’s hair fondly, and the child ran downstairs to where his siblings were playing. “But really, I’ve never known someone who made music for their living. I admire that,” he said.

“Well, I’m glad you enjoy listening to it.”

“Yes.” Abdul hesitated, a bit nervously. “You know, my wife and I were talking, yesterday. About the rent. We were thinking…”

Oh, now here it comes, I thought.

“You know, I told that realtor guy – the guy who showed you the apartment – that I was willing to reduce the rent by two hundred dollars. But he wouldn’t go.”

“You did?” I exclaimed. “I asked him…” I trailed off. I had specifically asked the realtor whether the rent was negotiable, but he said that the landlord was insisting on the advertised price – no exceptions. Of course, I had known that the realtor was a shyster; it’s New York. Everybody’s out to make a buck. But why was Abdul telling me that he had been willing to lower my rent?

“I think he was just being a little greedy,” said Abdul. Really, we were willing to go down, but he wanted it higher. So I agreed. But now I think we did the wrong thing.”

I felt utterly unsure of what to say. “I see. Hm.” I looked at the floor.

“It’s not right, you see? So let’s change it. Let’s take off two hundred from the rent. What do you say?” He looked at me earnestly.

What do I say? To lower rent? In New York? Was he serious?

“Uh, no problem…” I stuttered. “I mean…sure, that’s great! That’s…that’s very kind of you…”

“No, not kind. It’s just fair. My wife and I talked about it already. So from now on, you pay two hundred dollars less, OK? And we’ll deduct the two hundred you already paid from next month’s rent.”

“Sure, thank you. Thanks very much,” I said, walking up the stairs, a little dazed, and feeling an unusual emotion. It wasn’t the feeling of getting a “good deal,” nor the feeling of being given a gift, nor even that of making a friend. It was a reminder that there is a rare kind of goodness in the world, a humanity that transcends the bounds of friendship or personal obligation. And as the song of the muezzin caressed the air on the last night of Chanukah, I sensed that this gentle Muslim man had brought a little Christmas spirit into the life of his new Jewish neighbor.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli: Rhythmic Surgery

2006-12-04T01:34:00.000-05:00

Craig and Wendy busted my chops for not posting in a while, so this one is for them.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli are from Brooklyn; the streets they mention on their tracks are just blocks away from where I live. It’s a happy coincidence that one of my favorite albums is their Blackstar (1999). I especially appreciate the technical and lyrical features of the tunes: ingenious rhythmic variation, vocal gymnastics and modulation, extended jazzy riffs that draw out the length of the cadences, thwarting of expectation at line ends.

Of all the rhymes, I find Thieves in the Night ridiculously compelling. I've listened to it hundreds of times. Even in the first few lines of the opening verse, it is clear that Kweli is evoking the enjambment and multi-syllabic rhymes characteristic of virtuosic wordsmiths such as Rakim and Chuck D:

‘Give me the fortune, keep the fame,’ said my man Louis; I
agreed, know what he mean, because we live the truest lie.
I asked him why we follow the law of the bluest eye
He looked at me, he thought about it,
was like, ‘I’m clueless; why?’
The question was rhetorical; the answer is horrible.
Our morals are out of place and got our lives full of sorrow
and so tomorrow coming later than usual,
waiting on someone to pity us
while we finding beauty in the hideous.

The hypnotic refrain uses as its point of departure a quote from the final page of Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye:

“…we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not passionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.”

Mos Def and Kweli paraphrase the Morrison quote, trading off lines (Kweli’s words are in italics):

Not strong, only aggressive
Not free, we only licensed
Not compassionate, only polite
Now who the nicest
Not good, but well-behaved
Chasing after death
So we can call ourselves brave
Still living like mental slaves
Hiding like thieves in the night from life
Illusions of oasis making you look twice

(The last two lines are sung by both).

A quick time machine trip: back in the day (Three Feet High and Rising) De La Soul dropped unorthodox rhymes like Three is the Magic Number. Mase often begins a line with the final word (or even a flipped phrase) from the previous line:

Difficult preaching is Posdnuos' pleasure
Pleasure and preaching starts in the heart
Something that stimulates the music in my measure
Measure in my music, raised in three parts

Later on, Pos continues:

Focus is formed by flaunts to the soul
Souls who flaunt styles gain praises by pounds
Common are speakers who are never scrolls
Scrolls written daily creates a new sound

By echoing the last word of a line at the outset of the following phrase, Mase imparts a distinct quirkiness to the rhythmic flow. Back to the future: Mos Def recalls De La's quiet revolution, adding his own special twist. He initiates phrase after phrase using the same technique, but instead of an echo he manufactures a rhyme from the previous line (shown below in italics).

Most cats in my area be loving the hysteria
Synthesized surface conceals the interior
America, land of opportunity, mirages, and camouflages
More than usually; speaking loudly, saying nothing
You confusing me, you losing me, your game is twisted
Want me enlisted in your usary
Foolishly, most me join the ranks cluelessly
Buffoonishly accept the deception, believe the perception
Reflection rarely seen across the surface of the looking glass
Walking the street, wondering who they be looking past
Looking gassed with them imported designer shades on
Stars shine bright but the light rarely stays on
Same song, just remixed, different arrangement
Put you on a yacht but they won’t call it a slave ship
Strangeness, you don’t control this, you barely hold this
Screaming brand new when they just sanitized the old shit
Suppose it’s just another clever jedi mind trick
That they been running across stars through all the time with
I find it’s distressing; there’s never no in-between
We either niggaz or kings, we either bitches or queens
The daily ritual seems immersed in the perverse
Full of short attention plans, short tempers, and short skirts
Long barrel automatics released in short bursts
The length of black life is treated with short worth
Get yours first, them other niggaz secondary
That type of illing that be filling up the cemetery

...and so on. Then Mos Def tops it off with a mind-bending second chorus, illuminating a new species of rhythmic variation: an internally generated rhyme, one that expands from within. Even the most intricate of Rakim’s rhymes are embellished externally; they don't undergo such nascent development. Below, the original lines of the first chorus (the original, loosely quoted Morrison passage) are shown in regular type and the internally developed exegeses in italics:

Not strong, only aggressive, cause the power ain’t directed
That’s why we are subjected to the will of the oppressor
Not free, we only licensed, not live, we just exciting
Cause the captors own the masters to what we writing
Not compassionate, only polite; we well trained
Our sincerity is rehearsed and the stage is just a game
Not good, but well-behaved, cause the camera survey
Most of the things that we think, do, or say
We chasing after death just to call ourselves brave
But every day next man meet with the grave
I give a damn if any fan recall my legacy
I’m trying to live life in the sight of God’s memory
Like that y’all

Also, notice the manifold internal rhymes, including the mirror scheme in the first two verses quoted above: ABBA (no Swedish pun intended). You have to hear this poetry in motion to believe it; the page can’t do it justice.

Nerdy digression (beware!): Messiaen’s concept of non-retrogradable rhythms (outlined in his Technique de mon langage musical) is another example of rhythmic cells expanding from the inside out. The process – probably arrived at through his study of birdsong or via his odd brew of faith and numerology – often applies to smaller phrases. But Messiaen does employ it in larger sections; for example in the Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus (the piece, incidentally, which inspired me to begin composing) themes undergo internal augmentation, stretched across ever-lengthening time values as musical material is inserted.

I’d bet that close analysis of Cecil Taylor’s or Eric Dolphy's compositions and improvisations would yield similar internal motivic development. And these types of structures have elements in common with Theme and Variations form (e.g. Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann…). But Blackstar achieve their variation with words, revealing layers of meaning that set their accomplishment apart from purely instrumental works. Their particular brand of rhythmic surgery – slicing open the chorus and expanding it from within – is a novel architectural model for rap music, perhaps for any song form.

Do such innovations have wider implications for composers and creators? Yesterday I was discussing this rhyme with my buddy G-Spot out in L.A., and he made an astute observation: “The structure reinforces the message.” It’s true; the circular and internal aspects of the development so clearly evoke the cycle of despair and the patterns of behavior that Mos Def and Kweli strive to elucidate in the song. Any breaking of conventional barriers can encourage artists of all stripes – consciously or unconsciously – to forge beyond the familiar. Blackstar made only one album, but in doing so they upped the ante immeasurably; for that I shall always be grateful.

Calling Young Composers

2006-09-09T17:19:00.000-05:00

Wow, I can hardly believe that Making Score is entering its seventh season. It has been a real odyssey.

In 1999 I met with Barry Goldberg, Executive Director of the New York Youth Symphony, to discuss the possibility of doing a workshop with orchestra members interested in composing. The idea developed into a full-blown program for young musicians, age 22 and under, who wish to explore the compositional process. For the past few years, my good friend Lisa Bielawa has been a wonderful cohort, helping the program to expand and mature. Jordan Stokes been an excellent and steadfast Program Manager.

The program consists of 10 seminars held throughout the season. We discuss compositional structure, form, harmony, rhythm, philosophy, and the many issues involved in putting musical ideas down on paper. At the end of the year, members of the Youth Symphony perform music by the program participants on a final concert at the Thalia Theatre (Symphony Space). All students are on scholarship; they pay only for materials + an application fee. The sessions are held at ASCAP, across the street from Lincoln Center.

The deadline for this season's applications is October 2. Application forms can be found here.

At each session, a guest speaker illuminates aspects of composition and instrumentation, and talks about their experience as it relates to the creative process. Our guests this year will include: Carol Wincenc, Midori, David del Tredici, Susie Ibarra, Samuel Adler, DJ Spooky aka that subliminal kid, Steve Mackey, and Chen Yi. I'm grateful to our wonderful past guests, who comprise an impressive list:

Michel van der Aa
Mark Adamo
Eve Beglarian
Greg Beyer
Lisa Bielawa
Michael Boriskin
Gerard Bouwhuis
Gerald Cleaver
John Corigliano
Jon Deak
Wayne DuMaine
Mariano Fernández
Michael Gordon
Wycliffe Gordon
John Harbison
Wiek Hijmans
Fred Ho
Heleen Hulst
Billy Hunter
Vijay Iyer
Jennifer Koh
David Lang
Tania León
Lukas Ligeti
Michael Lowenstern
Rudresh Mahanthappa
Jonathan Hart Makwaia
James Markey
Meredith Monk
Valerie Naranjo
Susan Narucki
Paul Neubauer
William Purvis
Steve Reich
Alex Ross
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Christopher Rouse
Mischa Santora
Keren Schweitzer
Fred Sherry
Samuel Z. Solomon
Stephen Sondheim
Andy Statman
Kathleen Supové
Julieta Szewach
Christopher Taylor
Craig Taborn
Karen Tanaka
Michael Torke
Michi Wiancko
Peter Wilson
Julia Wolfe
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Because I don't teach privately or at a University, Making Score is my primary outlet for working with young composers. The big secret is that it's a great learning experience for me. I'm heartened to see that many of our alums have gone on to make their mark on the contemporary music scene here in New York and elsewhere. Go! Go!

To download an application form, please click here. Spread the word!

Composing During Wartime

2006-09-05T07:24:00.000-05:00

I sit at my desk with a pencil poised on the manuscript paper, trying to sort and sift ideas. I close my eyes, attempting in vain to keep my brain focused on the music, but I feel overwhelmed by the events unfolding around me. Back in February 2003, I marched through the streets of New York City, one of a million people who demonstrated to express outrage at our militaristic U.S. foreign policy. The entire East Side of Manhattan shut down; buses, taxis, and police vehicles were rendered helplessly immobile in a sea of people waving signs and chanting for judicious restraint. Now, three and a half years after the Defense Secretary predicted a quick victory that would take “a matter of weeks, not months”, American soldiers are caught in a bloody civil war with violence on the rise. 3,500 Iraqis died just this month, more than the total number of Americans who died on Sept. 11, 2001. Our own military casualties will soon surpass that number as well. Each day, mothers and fathers – Iraqi, Afghani, and American – lose their children, and an endless war is raging, on my behalf – on our behalves as U.S. citizens.

In the wake of John F. Kennedy’s murder, Leonard Bernstein wrote "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before…Sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same.” This statement, an artist’s sincere and earnest attempt to find a response to national crisis, has been used to promote the notion that creating music is powerful enough to overcome violence. For artists, the notion that creative acts are a valid and equal response to destructive ones, is an attractive idea. At times it has helped me to feel heroic simply by going about my daily business of writing, playing, and generally making music.

And yet the violent acts continue. How can I continue to scribble sixteenth notes under those circumstances? Is it possible to respond to such violence simply by making music? How deeply is this war dehumanizing us all, little by little, hour by hour?

A friend recently bolstered Bernstein’s pronouncement by pointing out that if we all played violins continually, we wouldn’t be able to kill or inflict pain (unless, I suppose if we all played violin as badly as I do…). This is true, but as the fighting goes on, that hypothesis seems more and more irrelevant. I write and play music passionately; others wage war passionately. I pick up a clarinet; someone else picks up a gun. The two acts are essentially unrelated, yet unfortunately, in the end, the guns are more plentiful. It’s not only easier to learn how to shoot than to compose, it’s also cheaper (join the army!) and it’s the path to greater glory. Making music may have been heroic to Lenny, but to most Americans the soldiers are the heroes.

Of course, the very story of Bernstein’s life is a rejection of passivity. It is only the frequent citation of this statement in times of war that irks me. For it reveals a troubling implication about the American psyche: that we profess to conquer violence while refusing to acknowledge its deeper roots in cultural conflict, poverty, imperialism, and turf battles over control of natural resources. John F. Kennedy’s assassination was no accident; nor was 9/11. Both events were part of an opposition's calculated political agenda, and both events were responses – however unjust and cruel – to U.S. policy.

If therefore, as individuals, we abhor violence, we cannot bury our heads in the sand. Protesting it cannot be left to our elected representatives. The government will always indicate that our sole role is to 'keep living our lives', continuing to be productive taxpayers, ‘stimulating the economy’; in short, during a time of war we should do what we always did, only with more conviction and sense of purpose. Those who make music play more devotedly, farmers farm with greater fervor, bankers bank even more intensely. And of course, shoppers shop with renewed vigor and determination.

Remember how, in the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush commanded us to go shopping? That would be our victory over the terrorists. “Shop!” we were fitfully instructed, as if carrying out that sacred command would prove that we hadn’t given in, that our lives hadn’t been disrupted by terrorist tactics. Dubya suggested that we answer violence thus: “Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” In the meantime, the federal government would respond to the violence for us, with a brutal 'shock and awe' preemptive war. Bush’s spokesperson Ari Fleisher had an additional, slightly more sinister, piece of advice for us citizens: “Watch what you say.” Accept the collective response of war. And accept the costs, the priorities. Our government spends more more each day for the war in Iraq than we spend each year funding the arts.

What’s the difference whether we shop or make music? Either choice constitutes a pyrrhic victory if it is accompanied by political passivity. I worry that Harold Pinter uttered a great truth in describing America as “a salesman…out on its own, and its most saleable commodity is self love.” How can we be so smug as to believe that the proper response to cataclysmic events is to continue with ‘business as usual’? In a democracy, how can we be so unmotivated to excoriate the policies of our own government and the conduct of our elected representatives? Has our lexicon become so distorted by Karl Rove’s doublespeak that we actually believe that doing nothing is equivalent to taking bold action?

The question becomes not merely whether – but when and how – we should stand up and say ‘enough!' War is a confusing situation, because withdrawal seems as fraught as “staying the course.” As predicted by many analysts from the start, a civil war has now broken out in Iraq, and the situation is now far beyond our control. What remains is a hopelessly anarchic unrest, its graveness ignored by the warmongers of this administration, whose corporate and political interests benefited from the onset of hostilities. In all the hand-wringing over what to do next, it is easy to forget that the pretexts of self-defense under which we attacked Iraq have long since faded into the sunset. The only remaining excuse for continuing to occupy Iraq is to retroactively justify our misguided invasion.

I often muse over the complex and intertwined relationship between art and politics. I once brought a newly finished piano work to my very 'political' teacher Louis Andriessen. He looked at the dedication and grinned wryly.

"What's this?" He pointed to my inscription, which read, 'For Yitzhak Rabin.' It was the week after Rabin had been shot, and I felt pained by his death.

"I wanted to do something," I said solemnly, "to express something....about his death..."

"Did you know him?" he queried, amusedly.

"No..." I replied.

"Then you shouldn't use his name," he snapped. "This is silly."

At first I thought he was just being deliberate and contrarian, but now I think he was probably right (and he is Dutch, after all...). Our politics doesn't always belong in our art, at least not in that way. It's tricky.

One book that had a profound effect on me was Antonio Tabucchi’s novel ‘Sostiene Pereira’ (there’s also a movie version, with Mastroiani). The story begins as fascism creeps slowly into Portuguese pre-war politics. The protagonist Pereira is a middle-aged newspaper editor who begins to encounter violence more and more in the headlines; he finds his conscience torn, and one day he decides that he can no longer calmly go about his daily routine; he is drawn inextricably toward the only possible effective response – activism. Around the same time, in 1936, Llorca, the great Spanish poet and playwright, lost his life fighting with the Communists; his body was dumped in a ditch. Should he have balked at fighting for a cause in which he believed, and instead continued to write more and more beautiful poetry? Did he accomplish more through his ‘heroic’ death than he would have through his writing? It’s hard to know.

For who is to say that composing – or making music of any kind, for that matter – isn’t itself an act of violence? Why romanticize and tranquilize creativity? Composing, it seems to me, is largely about upheaval, about disturbing the status quo. The transfer of sensation, information, and emotion from one person to another may feel profound, even spiritual, but it is certainly not peaceful.

Artaud, in fact, was convinced that our most violent urges could be quenched and quelled by means of art. His “Théâtre de la cruauté” supposed live theatre to be the medium by which we might exorcise our antisocial instincts, returning home thereafter to properly behaved homes. In his world, art would not attempt to erase violence, but would instead serve as the catharsis by which violence could be experienced in a transformed – and physically harmless – form.

Being an artist demands a temperment that is sensitive to the joys and cruelties of the outside world. Ironically, artists sometimes seem desensitized to what goes on around them, but I believe that this remoteness – sometimes even manifesting itself in outwardly hostile behavior – can be a self-defense mechanism employed by extraordinarily vulnerable souls who decry injustice and tyranny.

In 1988, shortly before his death, Bernstein offers an eloquent – and now eerily prescient – rant against tyranny. In a New York Times essay he enumerates the dangers of fascism lurking within our own political system, especially during election years. “To call for war at the drop of a pipeline (while secretly dealing for hostages); to teach jingoistic slogans about armaments and Star Wars; to prescribe the weapons industry for the health of our doped-up credit card economy; to spend a dizzying percentage of the budget on arms at the expense of schools, hospitals, cultural pursuits, caring for the infirm and homeless – these are all forms of tyranny.”

The tyrant to whom he referred of was none other than George Bush the First.

One could argue that the ‘tyrant’ neocons have in fact taken a rather artistic approach to foreign policy, though it is played out in the theatre of war rather than the theatre of cruelty. They imagined a world as they’d like to see it, and they have been trying to fit the real world – our world – into that fantasy, inconsistencies notwithstanding. Or as the Downing Street Memo illuminated it: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. Artists must likewise believe in the world that they manufacture out of thin air. When our faith wanes in the fabricated worlds of our making, the ‘vision’ is lost. So Dick Cheney, too, is a dreamer, albeit a tyrannical and authoritarian one.

At the end of his essay, Bernstein strikes a hopeful note. He writes: “I love my country – so much, in fact, that I am putting all my energies into seeing it to a better day, a more tranquil night, a shining and limitless future. And I abide by the words of that splendid liberal Thomas Jefferson that are inscribed on his monument in Washington: ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’”

Time to write some music.

Say Aa

2006-07-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

The apartment in Williamsburg where I've lived for nine years is quite unmemorable. Some have remarked that it has "personality" (isn't that usually a synonym for 'ugly'...?), but if that's true I've never noticed. There's wood paneling on the walls, a heinous blue carpet, a bed-room (New Yorkers will know what this means...), an elegant drop ceiling, and a blinding fluorescent light in the kitchen. Outside, warehoused trucks belching clouds of exhaust mix with the endless glockenspiel of the Kool Man ice cream truck and a pre-recorded faux-carillon of a nearby church, as the relentless jackhammers, bulldozers, and cranes drone incessantly, toiling to meet the impossibly bloated housing needs of this newly yuppified neighborhood. All this and more in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: the 'it' place to be.

My buddy Michel van der Aa, who hails from olde Amsterdam, loves New York. Michel is one of those composers whose music seems to be constantly seeking; it has a unique and pungent, often unsettling flavor, mixing acoustic and electronic components in unusual and highly personal ways. A few years ago, Michel had an itch to stretch his mind and his creative vocabulary. He decided to abandon composing for several months and study filmmaking in New York. I was living in Rome for the year, so he proposed renting my classy digs for a semester.

When I arrived back in the States that summer, Michel confessed (somewhat guiltily) that he had shot a 10-minute film in my apartment as a final thesis for his course at the New York Film Academy. He had written the screenplay himself, taken out an ad in the theatre magazine Backstage, and hired an 80-year old actor to play the lead - and only - role. He had then cleared much of my clutter into a corner, lugged cameras and lights up the steep staircase (Dutch folks are experts at negotiating impossibly narrow staircases), and sent my landlord into a panic by blowing several fuses while gathering footage inside my apartment and on my stoop.

Upon my return, Michel allowed me an exclusive V.I.P. screening (on my computer) of the film, Passage. Witnessing my drab apartment transformed into a cinematic backdrop was, to say the least, surreal. The protagonist's bizarre habits - capturing jars of steam from a kettle, dressing up for his own funeral, and freezing in one-eyed hallucinations - utterly transformed my habitual living environment. Suddenly my abode seemed to be a sinister, living presence, reminding me that I was living only one mundane life out of a million possible alternate existences.

Contemplating the multiple possible incarnations of my shabby apartment catapulted me back to my waylaid astronomy studies. The existence of simultaneous universes is inferred by M-theory (a theory that encompasses various realizations of superstring theory). The concept that our three-dimensional existence is one of an infinite number of posited 'shadows' thrown by an eleven-dimensional universe is in fact a very plausible - if mind-boggling - possibility to ponder.

When I was a kid, I was enthralled by those fascinating old TV shows in which Leonard Bernstein demonstrated alternate versions of the exposition in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth. Bernstein had written out several realizations, each of which began with the famous opening motive. But they quickly moved in wildly different directions. And Bernstein would explain, "Now, see how Beethoven could have done this"... "or this"..."but Beethoven finally did this," the dramatically divergent incarnations revealing the endless possible versions of melodic and harmonic invention from which the composer chose.

In any case, I heartily recommend allowing a filmmaker (doesn't necessarily have to be a composer/filmmaker) to transmogrify your living space into an alien landscape. For me, familiar objects were suddenly objectified, coming to life with startling vigor. And a sense of spontaneity and mystery was restored to a space that had long ago been rendered bland, inert, and pedestrian.

A bizarre footnote: I hadn't thought about Michel's movie in a while, but last week the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble sent me their concert program for the summer. PNME is a group that was recently radically transformed by its new artistic director, Kevin Noe, into a group that presents multimedia works of all stripes. Lo and behold, they had unconsciously programmed my piece Tied Shifts on the same concert as Michel's infamous Passage. So on July 21, my music shall be reunited with the very rooms in which it was written; and the audience will have a chance to witness the haunting apartment-doppelganger through the twisted, nefarious lens of director Michel van der Aa.

False Cognates

2006-06-30T11:47:00.000-05:00

During the summer of 1992, I spent four months in Northwestern Ghana studying the Lobi xylophone with Ngmen Baaru and Richard Na-Ile. The small village of Lawra was located in the northern corner of the Upper West Region, a two-day bus ride from the capital city Accra. In that part of the country the borders were porous; folks crossed to and from the ‘French Side’ (Burkina Faso), which was only a few miles away. I had a fellowship which allowed me to pursue an ‘independent study’ over the summer; the cash was just enough to get me to West Africa and back.

Having fallen in love with the sound of Malian music, especially the kora – a West African harp – I had originally intended to travel to Bamako. Unfortunately, Mali was in the throes of a civil war, so I decided that Ghana was a wiser choice. I called the magnificent percussionist Valerie Naranjo, who gave me Na-Ile’s address at the Lawra Ministry of Culture. Ministry of Culture? An African village may have dirt roads, mud huts, and no electricity or running water, but you can bet that it will have a healthy bureaucracy, thanks to its rich colonial history.

The Daghati people are split between three countries: Ghana, Burkina-Faso and Côte-d'Ivoire. Their main instrument, the ‘gyil’, is an ancestor of the Western marimba, and is ubiquitous in the society; it is played inside and outside, at festivals, funerals, ceremonies, and church services. Several times during my stay Baaru traveled on foot to a nearby river; there he gathered materials, which he later hand-crafted into xylophones with his nephews Kuulinsu and Maanibe.

The gyil has fourteen- (or eighteen-) keys and is constructed from tuned slabs of carefully carved mahogany wood, bound with animal hide to a sturdy wooden frame. Each gyil key has its own gourd resonator; crushed and flattened spider-webs are seared with rubber over holes carved in the gourd, creating a buzzing membrane as the keys are struck. The process of making a xylophone takes several months, because the wood needs to be “cooked” and dried. Matching gourds must be found for each key; they could be up to a foot in length.

In performance practice, two xylophonists play along with a drummer, and it is not uncommon for a gyil player to sing and play the same song for over an hour; phrases might be repeated twenty or thirty or a hundred times. The harmony is pentatonic, without octave equivalence, and with several of the notes falling "in-between" pitches of the Western chromatic scale. Throughout the piece a “dance beat” often surfaces in the high register of the xylophone, revealing a strong tie to the bell pattern and to the movements of the dancers. The link between dance and music is absolute; the two genres are inextricable, musicians cueing dancers and dancers signaling to musicians, back and forth.

The virtuosity of the players (and the dancers) is staggering, and their sheer stamina is extraordinary. In one of the most distinctive and challenging rhythmic techniques I learned from Kuulinsu and Maanibe, one gyil player mirrors the other's melodic improvisations one sixteenth pulse behind. Try it at home some time!

It took quite a while to get accustomed to their way of learning. I would bring my cassette recorder to lessons, then retreat for several hours to a hut to practice passages slowly on the xylophone, continually checking to the tapes. The gyil players in Lawra – most of whom were farmers during the day – found my “loner” approach amusing; they would stop by to watch as I practiced in solitude, fascinated to observe me learning in this bizarre way.

For them, learning was a communal activity and therefore took place in a social environment. In contrast with our TV-saturated generation, aspiring xylophone players in Lawra, Tumu, and other towns where I stayed – some as young as four – would quietly sit watching older musicians for hours. Only after the adults were finished playing would the kids reverently approach the gyil, tentatively grasping the thick, rubber-wound sticks. Instead of practicing specific licks slowly, determinedly, and in solitude – as I did – these young players stripped a melody down to its core, recreating simple, skeletal versions of the tunes, usually in strict tempo.

Learning the gyil was alternately inspiring and frustrating; misunderstandings abounded, as in any cross-cultural scenario. When I first heard the funeral song “Kukur Gandaa Bie, Kuora Gandaa Bie” I felt sure it was in 4/4 time, with occasional half-note triplets thrown in here and there. But one day, while practicing the tune on the xylophone, I noticed – out of the corner of my eye – one of Baaru’s wives dancing to the music; she was dancing in 3/4! This fleeting experience forced me to reconsider the building blocks of the music and to adjust my rhythmic orientation; what I had perceived as a broad triplet rhythm was actually the basic pulse.

Most of my initial mistakes stemmed from hearing the music as dependent on bass motion, when in fact the structure was rooted in the bell pattern. I was often seduced by hearing shifts in harmonic rhythm, a Western sensibility of hearing from the bottom up that was very difficult to shake. Because our ‘functional’ hearing is so grounded in tonality, it is hard to fully grasp music that is grounded on bell patterns. Those who like Salsa music might argue that Latin music is also based on cascára, but its Afro-European hybrid nature allows Westerners to hear its tonal grounding as primal. In a funny way, most of us probably hear Latin music 'wrong'.

West African music is most certainly bell-oriented, and on the xylophone those bell patterns manifest themselves as short melodies played and embellished in the upper register. If I had been more attuned to the bell pattern, I would have had an easier time intuiting the correct architecture of the music. For example, when I first began to learn “Luba Pog Nung Wa Da Bin Kobo” (“The Lobi Woman Bought Feces for One Penny [at the market, thinking it was food]”), I had no doubt that the melody began in the middle of the bar. Weeks later I realized suddenly that it started at the beginning of the bar. Once again, my sensibility became flipped on its head.

One day I sat down to play a string of songs in ‘Bewa’ style (including one of my favorites, ‘The White Man Cannot Eat the Green Leaf Soup’, the awful truth of which was revealed to me after several nights with a roiling stomach). After I finished playing, Na-Ile said to me: “You have done well. But, if you play more low notes, the people will enjoy the music more, and they will dance.”

I was confused; Na-Ile’s statement seemed to contradict what I knew about building energy in gyil music; from what I understood, higher pitches - outlining the bell pattern – were used to ramp up the intensity of the musicians and dancers. Perhaps I was wrong. “Can you show me?” I asked.

Richard sat down at the xylo to demonstrate, and played for about ten minutes (a short excerpt often lasted at least that long, which is why I requested demonstrations only when I had a burning question). I listened closely, but aside from the fact that he sounded much more fluid, Richard was playing much like I had. In fact, it seemed as if he was hitting more high notes – not low ones – than I had. I still felt puzzled as he handed the sticks back to me.

“More low notes, you say?” I confirmed uneasily, taking my seat on the tiny stool.

“Correct,” he said.

I began to play, adding abundant low notes. As I understood the Lobi aesthetic, low notes were generally employed to demonstrate virtuosity (rather like flourishes in the upper register in virtuosic passages by Chopin or Ysayë). “I can say that a master xylophone player shows his strong left hand,” the local truckdriver and consummate gyil player Borre had once remarked, commenting on Baaru’s mellifluous playing style, “He demonstrates his skill on the xylophone by the fine elaborations he makes with his left.”

So I laid off the top keys a bit and concentrated on adding more variations in the left hand, ornamenting bass patterns on the bottom several keys. Na-Ile listened politely, waiting until I had finished. He did not look convinced. “Let me show you again,” he said calmly, moving toward the xylophone. You are playing some nice melodies, but the people will not dance….”

“Then maybe instead of those bass notes, I should play the dance beat up on the high keys instead…?”

“Yes, play the dance beat, but play it low. Always low.”

I was flummoxed. “Low? I don’t understand. You taught me to play the dance beat with my right hand.”

“Yes, of course, you should play with the right, but always low!” he exclaimed.

“You mean you want me to cross my hands?” I asked confusedly. I had never seen anyone play like this, though I supposed it was possible.

“No, let me demonstrate,” and he played for another ten or fifteen minutes, the last few minutes looking at me intently while strongly accenting the dance notes in his right hand.

I fidgeted until he finished, feeling immensely impatient. “But you’re playing the high notes, with your right hand! I don’t understand. You’re not playing low notes.”

“But Mr. Derek, of course I am showing you the low notes! I can even say that I play them with more presence!”

“No, you were playing them high, up here…” and I pointed to the upper notes of the xylophone.”

He glanced where I was pointing, then back at me, smiling. “You say ‘high’, but you are pointing to the low notes!” he insisted, smiling, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.

“Low? You call these…these notes…low? But these are the highest notes on the xylophone…” I was dumbfounded.

“Of course we call them low! How else can we call them?”

Then what do you call these notes?” I pointed towards the bottom few notes of the xylophone.

“Look at the xylophone!” He stared at me in exasperation, and a moment of complete incomprehension passed between us. “Those notes are not low. They are high. And deep,” he added.

“High…and deep?” I muttered, eyeing the gyil's wooden frame. The hugest keys, all the way on the left side, needed bigger gourd resonators, so the large gourds were congregated near the ‘deeper’ notes. The keys and frame of the xylophone therefore curved upward to accommodate the gourds, making the 'deepest' notes farther from the ground, or…higher.

I laughed. Of course. Our use of the word “high” is a description from physics, meaning (more exactly) “a higher frequency of sound wave cycles per second.” This association had trumped all my other possible descriptions of how a pitch might manifest itself as “low” or “high.” Na-Ile’s was a clear representation of height, in inches off the ground.

It all depends what your definition of “is” is. Perhaps if I played cello or bass, the high/low mix-up would have been clear from the start. Several cellist friends of mine have remarked that adult students generally encounter great difficulty with the downward direction of the hand’s motion as the pitch moves higher on the string, and vice-versa. Young children, less sensitized to the “high-low” verbal cue, make the leap with little problem.

When we consider how divergent vocabularies can be, it is no wonder that great discord exists in the world. So much basic comprehension is subjective and so many so-called ‘universals’ are culturally determined. It can be eerie to contemplate how terminology programs and transforms the fundamental facets of perception. In that sense we are prisoners of our cultural context and vocabulary.

Yet viewed through a different prism we are also transmitters of a unique cultural perspective, avatars of our own language in a particular place and time. That uniqueness is something to treasure and nurture. And in those rare moments of epiphany, when a wide chasm has been bridged, I have felt an overwhelming joy as a mysterious and evasive truth was suddenly, dramatically, revealed.

Revisionist History

2006-05-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

Rimsky-Korsakov insisted that the act of creation could not be taught. Bartók felt the same way, so fervently that - even when desperate for money - he declined an offer from Columbia University to teach composition, preferring instead to teach piano or undertake ethnomusicological research. Even Feldman, an academic himself, warned that composition departments were merely “teaching teachers to teach teachers.”

During my years in school, I often heard uttered the following refrains: "he/she is a lousy teacher" or "he/she doesn't know how to teach." Rarely did I hear "I’m a terrible learner." Dismal teaching is a cinch to lament, but the sorry state of learning is often overlooked. Ultimately the students - not the instructors - are the losers in this game.

So how can one learn better? A helpful mantra might be "ask not what your lesson can do for you, ask what you can do for your lesson." Intuition tells me that most artists are inherently cognizant of the problematic aspects of their own work. It is therefore prudent, before seeking advice from others, to delve into one's own works, seeking to identify the weak links and formulating our insecurities into clear questions. Sometimes just initiating this process leads to a solution, allowing more time to address more refined issues in a lesson. I had been composing for 10 years before I began ‘studying’ composition; after only a few lessons I began bringing a list of questions, which steered the conversation towards the compositional choices with which I felt most uneasy. For certain mentors, such a 'pro-active' approach from the student yields very fruitful results, bringing the teacher's instincts - as opposed to their pedagogical skills, to the fore.

About ten years ago, in Den Haag, I was chatting about the thorny process of revision with my friend Peter Adriaansz, a fellow composer whom I hold in high regard. "I am a chronic reviser" he said. "It's my curse; I'm never satisfied with a piece. I rethink and rewrite until I'm absolutely satisfied. It can take years. And some of my pieces I just won't release again until I make all the necessary revisions."

I thought Peter overly dramatic. "Why don't you just write a new piece, with these insights in mind?" I asked. I showed him an orchestral score I had written recently; the work had already been performed twice, and I still wasn't entirely happy with the last section. However I had decided to leave it unrevised, as a document of my compositional mindset at the time; I explained to him my feeling that returning to that piece and reinterpreting it within my current aesthetic would be anachronistic and untrue to the original conception.

Peter smiled. "I suppose you and I are just different kinds of composers", he murmured wistfully.

His pronouncement left me feeling unsettled. What did he mean, "different kinds"? Was he passing judgment? Sure I revised, a bit, here and there. But not obsessively. Not laboriously. What did that imply about my integrity as a composer? Peter’s words resonated with me, activating a nerve in my brain.

We composers can manufacture good rationales for choosing not to alter our works once they're 'finished' (or perhaps I should say abandoned); it can be fascinating to look back on individual works as markers in the timelines of our creative lives; thus the 'documentation' rationale. And there are dozens of other possible reasons not to revise – stubbornness; superstition; a reluctance to acknowledge weakness; a fear of the great unknown; laziness; depression. But those rationales are meaningless for the dissatisfied audience member who must endure hearing our work.

I like Bill Bolcom's terminology; he refers to a weak spot as a 'sag'. Be it tonal, temporal, formal, or spiritual, a sag is a sag. And whatever the reasons for letting those sleeping sags lie, we the composers must resist the temptation; we must train our ears to recognize and correct them. For it is we – better than any teacher or critic – who are uniquely equipped to identify where weakness lies in our own works. We alone know intimately our tendencies, our proclivities, the distractions which seduce us, the habits upon which we fall back.

Around the time of my encounter with Peter, I was writing a piano piece, which I called Turning. One reason I gave the piece that title was because I could sense my compositional process beginning to shift; I had determined that I was most satisfied as a chronic reviser. These days, to the chagrin of my publisher, I tend to revise after virtually every performance. I recall my encounter with Peter and I find it hard to identify with the composer I was then.

We live in an era of marketing makeovers, in which politicians deny their mistakes, change original rationales to suit the polls of the moment, and take credit for events and trends that have nothing to do with their own policies. If politics is rooted in appearances, perhaps art (with a small ‘a’, just to be safe), is the other side of the coin: truth-telling. Such truth-telling must of necessity start with oneself, and painful questions follow: Why write this? Is this interesting? Does it go on too long? Not long enough? Is it clear? Is it muddled? Is it pretentious? Simplistic? Someone else can – and probably will – answer those questions for us, but we only become good composers when we answer them ourselves, and then make appropriate changes.

Boulez writes about the study of composition, "teaching is only a beginning; it is teaching yourself that is important." One can provide a solid foundation for composers by setting forth the essentials - harmony, analysis, counterpoint, musicianship. But the actual process of composing itself is cloaked in mystery: it is a combination of seeking and heeding one's own inspiration and making painstaking, personal decisions. Few, if any, can teach that.

Thracian Echoes: a shadow of the music

2006-04-13T18:41:00.000-05:00

In August 2001, I traveled to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, to study the Thracian folk style with clarinetist Nikola Iliev. Thracia is a region in Bulgaria that stretches over the Rodopi Mountains and extends into Modern Greece. Nikola - the father of my friend Ilian, also a brilliant clarinetist - is certainly one of the great exponents of Thracian music. He founded a folk group called Konushenska, which plays Bulgarian wedding music and travels around Europe to play in folk festivals.

Each day in Plovdiv, I would spend several hours transcribing and memorizing the songs Nikola played. His nephews Emil and Misha would assist him by translating from Bulgarian into French or English.

Nikola began by teaching me the easy arrangements, ones in 6/8 meter like "Shinka Le". I copied a few of those dutifully down, but swiftly informed him that I had really been hoping to learn tunes in odder, more complex meters. He seemed thrilled to hear that I desired to tackle the really challenging stuff. So he started teaching me all sorts of traditional repertoire: Paydushko Xhoro (5/8), Mizhka Richenitza (7/8), Daychovo Xhoro (9/8), and Krivo Pazardzhishko Xhoro (11/16), Buchimisch (15/16), and various ones in compound meters (5/8 + 9/8 + 13/8, etc.).

Transcribing helped me to memorize and retain the music correctly. I notated everything musical that seemed relevant: the pitches and rhythms, the inflections, the improvisations and variations, the formal structure. I was also aware that Nikola might - at some point – want to use my versions as an aide to help him publish his original compositions in the West. Nikola, however, had his own copies of the tunes. His sketches looked more like jazz heads, without chords. The harmony was implied; all that was notated was a melody line, some ornaments, and the basic form.

One day Nikola informed me that he was going to teach me a special Thracian song called Elena Moma. We began the transcription ritual; he played and I wrote it down: six eighth notes and a sixteenth, adding up to 13/16 time.

Nikola was looking over my shoulder as I wrote. "Nye!" he blurted, shaking his head, and immediately began to dig through some of this papers. He fished out a worn sheet of music with the title "Elena Moma" in Cyrillic. His version clearly showed that the music was felt in 7. I started to play from his sheet, but he stopped me; I was holding the last beat too long. He played it again. It sounded to me like what I had originally notated, in 13/16.

"The same" I said in my pidgin Bulgarian, pointing to my notation.

He shook his head furiously, then snatched my pencil and music paper from my hand. He began to write out his own version of the song, again in 7. It showed 6 eighth notes, then a dotted eighth beamed to a sixteenth. "Seven!" he explained.

I shook my head. “Thirteen,” I said, and wrote it out for him as I had done before.

He played it again for me, slowly, and notated it his way.

"It's not right!" I said. "I must keep what I wrote down." I closed the book. I was a bit resentful that he was telling me how to write music down.

Then something unexpected happened; Nikola threw a tantrum. In a huff, he began putting away his clarinet. Noting that something was amiss, Emil had wandered back into the basement room and began arguing with him, but Nikola was clearly fed up.

"My uncle says he can't teach you any more today," Emil shrugged. "He's had enough. I think he's a bit emotional about this particular song."

I started to protest, but Nikola was stomping upstairs in a fury, muttering to himself out loud.

"My uncle feels that you two just don't understand each other when it comes to this song, and he doesn't want to work on it any more," said Emil apologetically.

I felt rotten about insulting Nikola, but also mystified. How could a musician with such a consummate, nuanced ear be unaware that he was notating his own music incorrectly?

Suddenly Nikola reappeared, with his coat on, at the top of the stairs and said something curtly to Emil. "My uncle wishes that you come with us to visit a friend of his, who will help to enlighten you about this song."

Minutes later we were back in his sporty red Fiat hatchback, whizzing through the outskirts of Plovdiv. "Trebant!" Nikola exclaimed gleefully to Emil, pointing out a boxy East German car parked carelessly on the side of the road. "Lada," he snickered, indicating an ugly Russian jalopy heading in the other direction. I had no idea where we were going. At the outskirts of the town center, gypsy horsecarts carrying melons plodded over bridges. We finally screeched to a halt in the parking lot of a large, unremarkable building, which turned out to be the Plovdiv Academy of Music. Soon we were sitting in the office of Lyuben Dossev, ethnomusicologist and kaval player.

"In one sense," Lyuben was explaining to me, "you are right. Elena Moma is in 13/16, as you have expressed. However in another sense - the deeper sense - you are wrong; it is in 7, as Nikola has notated.

"I'm sure it's 13..."

"No, it's 7. The gypsy drummer will always feel 7." Most of the drummers in these Bulgarian wedding bands - like Nikola's - were gypsies. The guys in Nikola's group would often crack jokes at the drummer's expense, but they regarded him with fondness and respect.

"But suppose a Western drummer is playing this song?" I entreated him. He will feel 13; he'll have to. Otherwise he'll play it wrong."

"No, he will feel 7. Otherwise he will be playing it wrong."

I was exasperated. I had spent years training my ear to hear and notate inflections and their rhythmic irregularities. I was trying to do be exacting in my notations of Bulgarian music, like Smha Arom had been in his exacting notations of Pygmy music. "What are you talking about? I'm right, but I'm wrong?"

"You're correct empirically, but deluded musically. Think about jazz - How can I write what you call 'the swing'? It can't be written, unless I write something that looks ridiculous, like ratios of 3:2 within divisions of 5. But no jazz musician would ever read that kind of silly notation, because jazz is not felt in subdivisions of 5. It's felt in subdivisions of 2, and swung. If I write it in 5, I may be empirically correct, but I am not conveying the feel of the music; in fact, I am betraying it."

Something about his argument felt solid and just. But what Nikola had written seemed so clearly wrong to me. Because I felt stymied, I took a slight detour.

"Well, I understand what you're saying, as far as jazz is concerned. But it's even more complicated than you've painted it. I mean, there's not one way to feel jazz. You can feel that 3:2 rhythmic ratio, but if you're swinging like Louis Armstrong the ratio will sound more like triplets - or even dotted rhythms - and if you swing "cool" like Stan Getz, it will sound much less pronounced, like 5:4, or virtually even sometimes."

"Well," he replied, "my understanding of jazz is quite limited, certainly inferior to yours. But if you go to Sofia or Stare Zagora or even nearby in Pazardjik, they will play differently from the style that you hear here in Plovdiv. The songs will be different, the meters will be different, the swing will be different too. Nikola may write what looks to you like a 3 + 1 dotted rhythm, but to him - and to any Bulgarian musician - it means long and short."

"Right, but I'm a Western musician, and I need to write down what I hear, not what Nikola hears," I said. "Otherwise I represent it falsely."

"No, you are thinking backwards," he said firmly. "You write it wrong when you write it for Western musicians to read. That would be as if you tell me you want to learn to speak Bulgarian language, but you want all the words written out in English transliteration. No, if you want to learn Bulgarian language, you learn Cyrillic alphabet; you learn Bulgarian spelling. And if you want to learn Bulgarian music, you must learn Bulgarian notation, not read a Western interpretation. When they play Elena Moma they must feel 7, not 13."

"But...." I began, feebly. I began to realize that I was fighting a losing battle; the cultural arrogance of my approach was weakening my argument. "Some of the musicians for whom I write won't....be able to read Bulgarian notation. Why shouldn't they be able to read transcriptions in a Western notation?"

His face hardened imperceptibly; "You write whatever you want," Lyuben said, getting up suddenly from his chair with a curious smile. "But those people reading your transcriptions will be playing only a shadow of our music."

Reggie and Ludwig

2006-03-16T22:09:00.000-05:00

After school I floated around for a while. Busked on the streets in Paris until my clarinet got stolen at a phone booth, then herded baby goats on a farm in Languedoc-Rousillon. Afterwards I headed to Israel to do ethno- research on Yemenite women’s vocal music and to study orchestration. One day I received the news that a close friend from college had died, and I decided to return to the States for his funeral. So at 22 years old, I found myself back in New York, lacking gainful employment.

After a few weeks of intensive searching, I landed a position teaching music to emotionally disturbed youths at a residential treatment center. One of the largest of its kind in the country, the center housed about 1000 boys. My duties were teaching the after-school music program and conducting the choir.

I was grateful to receive a steady paycheck, but the job was exhausting. These were not your average kids; they had graduated from the school of hard knocks. Many were already experienced thieves and drug sellers. The week I arrived, one of my students – home on a weekend visit – was arrested after midnight in Queens; he had been discovered in a stretch limo along with two prostitutes, carrying several thousand dollars in cash. He was 12 years old and sang 2nd soprano in my choir.

At this place you could never predict which and how many kids were going to show up on a given afternoon, nor in what mood they would arrive. So how do you plan an after-school program that might randomly consist of a 6-year-old, four 8-year-olds, a 10, 11, and 12-year-old, three 14-year-olds, and a 17-year-old? The answer is: you don't. You summon your most potent powers of improvisation, adjust to events as they take place, and try to weather the class period, as the clock ticks ever more slowly.

Luckily I had a seasoned pro as my mentor and cohort, the drama teacher Maxine. I had seen her wilt a youngster – and many an adult – with her glare, only to turn around and lavish effusive tenderness on another. She taught me the ropes: staying ‘on message’, maintaining consistency in my program, exuding a calculated aloofness, arbitrating squabbles with impartiality, setting realistic goals, and taking time for myself when I needed it. Above all, she emphasized the kids’ desperate need for compassionate discipline.

Reggie was one of the toughest boys at the center. His name wasn't short for Reginald. It was Reggie on his birth certificate; he had been born around the time the Yankees won the World Series, in the late ‘70s. Unfortunately he hadn't quite lived up to his namesake's reputation. He was a bully with low self-esteem, prone to throwing small children across the room and to emitting bloodcurdling screams in his sleep. The rumor was that he had set fire to his grandmother's house twice. At age 9, he had been removed from his home and sent here for rehabilitation. Now, at a venerable 13 years old, he would clearly never be adopted (the quixotic wish of most of these institutionalized kids), and this unspoken reality made him even more bellicose.

I had dismissed Reggie from my choir after he punched another boy in the lip, knocking out a tooth. Nonetheless, he came regularly to my after-school music program. At first I couldn't figure out if he was appearing of his own volition or if he was being dumped on me by other teachers frustrated with his tendency to pummel smaller children at the slightest provocation (or non-provocation). Either way, he did demonstrate a remarkable soft spot and a natural aptitude for music. Most kids gravitated toward rap or other types of pop stuff (I regularly held emcee contests in which I could sometimes be cajoled to participate - yo!), but Reggie was interested in melodies; he had stellar pitch and a formidable ear, an uncanny ability to hear tunes and sing them back immediately.

One day Reggie sauntered into my room a few minutes early, which irked me because he was using up my 'sanity-time' (i.e. my break). "I wanna learn this song," he announced.

"Which song?" I responded, not looking up from my book.

"It goes like this: na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-naaaa, na-na-na-naaaaa, na-na-na-naaa....." he intoned in a blasé tenor. It was several seconds before I recognized the tune.

"That's Für Elise", I told him, amused and slightly astonished. "Where did you hear that?"

"On a commercial. What did you say, fur and leaves?"

I smiled bemusedly. "It's Beethoven."

He stared at me blankly. "That's a man?"

"Beethoven is a composer; a guy who writes music. Like me. Or Michael." I nodded towards a kid in the corner who was improvising lyrics while a cliché beat emanated feebly from a mini-Casio keyboard.

“You know him? Beethoven?” Reggie asked.

“He’s dead,” I replied. “He’s been dead for more than a hundred years.” I waited for that fact to sink in; but it didn’t seem to mean much to Reggie.

"You can teach it to me?" he implored.

I eyed him skeptically, then turned back to my book. "I'm not doing any favors for you until you learn to behave in here."

"I can behave! I can behave!" he assured me unconvincingly, tugging at my shirt.

"Get off me. OK, listen," I ventured. "Here’s the offer. I put you in charge of keeping the other kids quiet. NOT by beating on them, but by example. If you can tone down your antics in here, then I'll spend five minutes at the end of each class teaching you Für Elise. But if you mess up… forget it, Buster. You can sit on the time-out couch, like your friend Lester." I gestured towards a sullen-looking kid parked awkwardly on a faded brown corduroy divan, his lower lip drawn into a pout. “Got it?” I asked.

Reggie smiled. For better or worse, it was a deal.

Maxine didn't particularly like Reggie. So I expected her to be skeptical when I informed her about the ‘deal’. But she seemed surprisingly pleased. She was impressed by his commitment to music. “He trusts you,” she observed. “Maybe you can teach him something. Just remember, these kids are badasses, every single last one of them. If he doesn’t behave, sit his skinny behind on that couch, and let him take a few minutes to cool down.” She lit a cigarette. “Some of them need a damn lifetime to cool down.”

At first I tried to teach Reggie notation, but he became exasperated trying to read the music. One thing would lead to another, and he would end up on the time-out couch, sneering. He gave up altogether on several occasions; but each day, Phoenix-like, he arose anew, ready to fight the battle again. Eventually I dispensed with the two-way torture of teaching him to read notes, and we started to make real headway. He absorbed Für Elise by ear, using a recording I had lent him. From his progress, it became clear that he was practicing on his own; one of the staff at the dorm even lent him a keyboard, which was promptly reclaimed after Reggie smashed another kid in the ribcage with it.

The sessions were difficult for me. I would get very frustrated with his inability to concentrate for extended periods of time; the most insignificant thing could distract him - another boy's voice, a bird chirping, a car honk in the distance - and he would be useless for the remainder of the session. Particularly annoying was his habit of wearing shirts too big for him; the cuffs covered the lower halves of his hands. At first I chalked it up to the kids’ general tendency to wear dramatically oversized clothes. But it was getting towards summer, so his insistence on dressing this way was starting to seem bizarre.

On one particularly stressful day, I lost my cool. "Reggie, you've got to roll up your sleeves." He kept playing, ignoring me. "Reggie, listen to me when I talk to you. Stop playing and roll up your sleeves. They're getting in the way of your fingers, and you’re making tons of mistakes."

"Na na na na na na na na naaaaaa…" he sang along with the music, willfully deaf to my entreaties.

"OK, we'll do it the hard way then." I grabbed his left arm, gently but firmly. He squirmed. I rolled up the sleeve. The music stopped. I gasped audibly. His arm was covered with what looked like a scabby, flaking rash of bright red and white circles. Shaken, I dropped his arm; it landed weightily on the keyboard in a chromatic cluster. Reggie was staring spacily over the piano, slowly plunking random notes with his right hand. The other kids were watching, hushed.

"Man, Reggie…” I was at a loss for words. “…I'm sorry. I really am," I said, as the bell rang, not an instant too soon. Reg bolted out, along with the other kids.

It was the end of the day. I shook myself, and headed up the stairs, angry and sheepish. In all these months, why hadn't anyone informed me that the poor guy had a disease, or scars, or whatever those marks were? I decided I would check his file to find out more. On the way upstairs, I ran into Maxine. She sensed my mood.

"What's up your butt?" she inquired.

I looked at her squarely. "What the hell is wrong with Reggie?" I asked.

"He's a badass."

"Yeah, yeah. Come on, what happened to him? Why does he have those-"

"Honey," she interrupted, "you need to chill out, take a day off, and stop worrying about that hoodlum."

"I'm going up to look at his file and see what happened to him."

"I wouldn't do that, D…” she cautioned.

"Why not? Why else are the files there? How am I supposed to teach these kids when I don't know where the hell they're coming from? I just embarrassed him in front of the whole damn class; you should have seen it."

"He'll get over it."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Maxine." I said, and kept climbing.

I had never actually examined the files before, though they were easily available for us to consult. Initially I had arrived at the center with great idealism, prepared to read all the case histories. “Don’t bother, Derek, really,” Maxine had insisted. “It will just wear you out. Too much information. With these kids, you need common sense, not facts and figures. There are much more important ways to spend your time than reading those stupid reports. Here, learn to juggle.” She tossed me three tennis balls. “It’s actually easier if you start with two…” And so Maxine taught me to juggle. She also taught me devil sticks, yo-yo tricks, and various card games, which would all come in handy on numerous occasions, especially when kids were bored or restless.

But on this day I craved information, not distraction. I stomped into the office, unlocked a metal filing cabinet, grabbed several dusty notebooks, and began rifling through the pages until I arrived at Reggie's folder.

First I found a bunch of mundane vital statistics, basic facts about his family and school. Then some grade reports. Not too good, worse and worse. Some police reports. Then a psychologist's evaluation from a group home where he had stayed for a few months. I removed the booklet and stared at the worn cover. For a second I felt ashamed, as though I was preparing to read a private diary. But Reggie had never kept a diary; his own viewpoint would remain unknown. I began to read: emotional abuse; physical abuse; continual sexual abuse; cigarette burns covering his arms and legs; found unconscious numerous times; head trauma; hospitalization for schizophrenia and psychosis reports: multiple hemorrhages, grafting, attempted suicide, detox, stomach pump, burned his house down.

So it was true. He had actually burned his grandmother’s house down.

I stopped reading. How could I possibly hope to teach a kid who had already experienced so much? Maxine had been partly raised in a detention center in the South; she could relate to his pain and alienation. I felt weirdly envious of her understanding of these kids' lives. I thought about calling her, but she would have just snapped “Shut up, D; I told you not to read those stupid fuckin’ reports!” Too much information.

Reggie didn't show up to my program for the next few days. I became worried that he had decided to ‘write me up’, reporting the incident to his psychologist as an assault. The month before, one kid had fabricated a wildly elaborate and violent fantasy about a staff member beating and tying him up. The accused was cleared of wrongdoing, but the whole story so besmirched his reputation that he quit the center less than two weeks later. ‘Resigned to pursue other interests’ was how it was worded in the monthly bulletin.

So I relived the Reggie incident in my mind to try and determine whether I done or said anything that could be deemed ‘abuse’. Maxine laughed at my preoccupation with the event. "D, you need to take a day off and stop worrying about that garbage. These kids won't write you up unless they hate you or unless you insult them on purpose. Reggie’s not stupid; you made him a deal, and he's gonna collect. No one else wants that pain-in-the-ass in their program besides you anyway. Trust me; he's got nowhere else to go."

I wasn’t convinced. But sure enough, in a few days Reggie began showing up at my program regularly again. Nothing was said; it was as though the incident had never taken place.

Steady progress was made on Für Elise. Soon Reggie had memorized the opening A minor phrase and began working on the subsequent C major section. One day he seemed unusually distant and unapproachable. Instead of launching right away into the ‘song’ (as he called it), his hands drifted restlessly around the keyboard, fiddling with hints of the melody. I watched him curiously as he experimented and decided to leave him on his own for a bit. Then I set off to encourage the wanna-be rappers, who were busy trying to adjust the volume on a cheap karaoke machine that the school had recently bought.

“Don’t go!” Reggie exclaimed.

I turned around. “What do you need me for?” I asked. He was holding down the damper pedal, trilling the opening figure in the lowest octave.

"Why you think he wrote this?" he asked.

"Who, Beethoven?"

"Yeah." His hands moved pensively over the keys. "I mean, like, do you think he was hearing it all the time and just kept writing the notes down? Or did he just make it up, on the spot, like, freestyle?"

I was about to reply, but hesitated. "What do you think?" I asked him.

"I think....like, I think he was hearing it all the time, until he had the whole thing, like, in his head. Then he wrote it down, all at once.” He looked out the opened door onto the blacktop where the other kids were playing in the late afternoon light. “Sometimes I hear it at night, in my dream…the song…you know?" He looked embarrassed.

“Yeah.” I probably should have responded with something profound or authoritative - or at least humorous - but I was tired. And I had just noticed that the kids at the karaoke machine were starting to fight over the microphone, so I stepped in quickly to diffuse the situation. The bell rang and everyone ran out. Silence was a welcome relief.

About a month after the 'deal' had been struck, Maxine took me aside. "I've never seen Reggie concentrate on anything before. What you are achieving with him is incredible. What do you think about having him do a real performance for the other kids?" Her eyes sparkled. So we arranged to have Reggie perform for the entire school one afternoon, following the weekly assembly. The big show was to be in two weeks.

On the day before, Reggie and I were summoned to Maxine’s studio. She had prepared a wonderful surprise: a fake, glittery tuxedo made of shiny polyester, complete with tails and a top-hat. She fitted it on Reggie. "What a dapper young man!" she exclaimed.

He beamed. "Gotta go practice," he shouted and skipped off.

“Nice tux!” I said to Maxine and laughed. “Are you gonna have it cleaned?”

Maxine frowned at me; her mood had changed instantaneously. “These kids have nothing, Derek," she said deliberately. "Nothing. Remember that, okay? To him, that is a tuxedo.”

I was shamed into silence, remembering that Reggie hadn’t even gone home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Maxine was putting on her coat. "What other stuff are you working on with him?" she asked opaquely.

"Other stuff? What do you mean?” I asked, mystified.

"I mean, what's next?" she said, hanging up the tux.

"Why? You think he'll screw up?"

"You should be planning what comes next, that's all. Continuity, D. You ought to be working on something else, too. With Reggie." She walked wearily towards the stairs. "I'm going home; these kids are driving me crazy. See you tomorrow."

I stood there, peeved and resentful. Continuity? What was that about? I had sunk more time and energy into working with Reggie than with any other child. More time, hell. I needed to focus on other kids, many of whom had noticed that Reggie was getting more than his fair share of attention.

The big date arrived. All the kids were packed into the bleacher seats of the gym. Assemblies were always pandemonium; staff dashed around quelling fights, ordering misbehaving children back to their dorms or sending them to the director’s dreaded office. Reggie was excruciatingly nervous. Backstage, in Maxine’s studio, he paced around anxiously in his fake tux.

"I can't do it," he said. "I'm gonna forget the whole song. Everyone out there wants me to mess up. They all hate me."

"They don't hate you, Reg," I said. "They're rooting for you, and so are we. You’re gonna be great. Just take a deep breath before you start. Take two, actually. Be sure to do that, OK? Keep thinking, breathe! Hold that word in your mind as you walk out onto stage. And remember to take your bows. Show me your bow."

He bent awkwardly for too long, facing the ground, then sprang back up abruptly.

"Great. Fantastic."

"Wait, let me try again. I’ll do it better. Watch me, watch me!"

And so it went, until the drone of the director's announcements ground to a halt. "And now, we have a special surprise for you all."

Rumblings could be heard in the crowd. Some of the older kids knew about the upcoming performance.

Reggie was sweating profusely. Maxine gave him a rough kiss and practically pushed him out into the gym. We watched - not without trepidation - from backstage as he meandered foggily towards the out-of-tune upright piano and plopped down, stoop-shouldered, on the bench. Then he suddenly stood bolt upright. He had forgotten to take his bow. He looked back at us for reassurance; Maxine stared impassively back at him. Painstakingly he turned around and took his segmented bow. At this point, a couple of kids in the audience applauded sporadically, and it gave Reggie courage. He sat back down on the bench and, after what seemed like ages - maybe he was taking deep breaths? - he lifted his hands and began to play.

And play. He finished the first eight bars and took the repeat. Then he took took it again. And again. He would finish each time with a slight ritard, then tentatively begin the same opening phrase. It was minimalist Beethoven. I turned to Maxine. "He's stuck in a loop!” I whispered. “I can't believe it; we worked on this transition so many damn times!"

"Shut up!" she whispered back excitedly. "He'll get it. Don’t worry about it! These kids don’t know Beethoven from a hole in the ground." She was clearly enjoying herself, but I felt suffocated with empathy. With each repetition of the first phrase, the notes became more weighty and bedraggled. Rather than a light and effusive work, it began to sound like a dirge, the heavy keys pounding gloomily one after another.

After what seemed like endless iterations of the first eight bars, Reggie paused for an achingly long interval. And then, miraculously – instead of the trill – a heavenly sound ensued: three tentative upwardly rising notes, and the tonality changed – C major! Reggie had done it; he had broken the cycle! He had worked his way out of his first ever memory slip of his first ever performance. He began to gain confidence and started to play more relaxed and fully. Maxine and I could barely contain our glee. She squeezed my arm and smiled as we listened. "This is the best day of his life, you know," she said, regarding him wistfully. "The best day of his life, for sure."

Reggie finished Für Elise in an anticlimactic fashion; he stopped abruptly with hectic incertitude, then turned his head back towards Maxine and me, grimacing imploringly. His hands were still poised at the keyboard and he was trembling. The atmosphere in the ‘concert hall’ was charged with tension; at that moment, you could have heard a switchblade drop - from out of one of the kids' pockets. Luckily, none did. Maxine gave an almost imperceptible nod towards the audience. Reggie stood up awkwardly, turned to his colleagues, and bowed stiffly. The gym erupted in cheers. The kids screamed and hooted. Reggie stood silhouetted in the glare of the flourescent lights. He bowed again. He bowed yet again, looked back agitatedly, then turned and bowed again. The hoots had become a rhythmic chant and the kids were stamping their feet. “Reggie! Reggie!”

"Damn, I forgot to tell him how to exit the stage!" I blurted. So I dashed out into the limelight of the gym floor, grabbed his shoulder, and ushered him back to the studio. He was panting and dazed, but very happy. His heart was beating wildly. Maxine hugged and kissed him. The kids were already scampering out of the gym in an unruly mob, herded by the staff through the double-doors.

I hadn't see Reggie for at least a week after his grand success. He had finally been allowed home on a short visit, and hadn’t shown up to my program since he’d returned to the center. Two kids had been assigned to help clean up my room. The bell rang, and they instantaneously sprinted up the stairs and outside.

I hadn’t seen Maxine either; she had been busy making costumes for a new play. Before leaving, I stopped at her studio to linger a bit. She was busy knitting wool stockings for the show. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“Same as it ever was,” she said, without looking up.

I noticed the shiny tux hanging on the rack and chortled. “Man, I still can't get over that performance, you know? I’m just so proud of Reggie,” I said. "Where's the top hat, by the way?"

"Gave it to him," she said.

“Hey, I haven’t even seen Reggie once since the show! You have?”

“Once,” she said. “That’s when I gave him the hat.”

I feigned indignation. “Oh, so he came to your program! I guess now Reggie's too big a star for me, huh?" I laughed.

"Guess so," she said curtly. "Or vice versa, maybe." An uncomfortable silence welled up. "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

She fixed her gaze on me. "Reggie's not coming back to your program. He's not coming back here. Period."

I was uncomprehending. "He went home…" I blinked. "You mean…his grandmother took him in? She wants him back?" That would have been a surprise, but anything was possible.

Maxine shook her head slowly and kept knitting. "They’ve sent him upstate. He tried to burn his house down. Again." She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Three strikes.”

‘Upstate.’ That was practically a swear word. Worse, actually. Around here swear words were more common than normal speech. But 'upstate' was a bad luck spell, an unutterable curse. It meant a juvenile detention center, in a new, faraway place, And it meant a rougher, harder, rawer cycle of institutionalized despair.

I stood frozen in the doorway, feeling an unfamiliar mixture of anger, irony, and impotence. I remained there for a while, staring vacuously at the glittering tux draped in faux-elegance over its wire hanger.

"Little badass..." Maxine grinned and shook her head, still knitting.

Someone else's music

2006-02-23T12:15:00.000-05:00

Back in pre-Gulf War One times, I would trapse for miles through Jerusalem to André Hajdu's house for my composition lesson. It was practically an all-day affair. I'd arrive around noon, then we would sit in a very cold room, drinking tea and reviewing orchestrations I had completed during the past week: Haydn, Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Scriabin, Brahms, Stravinsky, Bartók. Hajdu emphasized that individual composers' scores had a look as well as a sound: "and when you begin to recognize the look, then you are really getting somewhere." After correcting my orchestrations, he would analyze a work, removing from his shelf a dog-eared copy of La Mer that Messiaen had marked up, or a heavily-penciled score of the Rite. Later on, the conversation would switch to the subject of my music.

On one particularly memorable day, Hajdu leafed through a new score over which I had labored intensively. He muttered impatiently, "yes, some very nice sounds, but it's not you." Eyes closed, fist clenched tightly on his brow as if tugging at a thought lodged in his brain, he continued: "You are writing someone else's music, and they are annoyed. Go sit in a dark room until all sounds and ideas have left you. Then, when you finally begin to hear your own music, write that down. Develop it; but keep it simple and direct," he admonished. "Solo instrument."

The dour assessment of my piece wasn't exactly what I had hoped to hear, but I knew in my gut that Hajdu was correct, so I resolved to follow his advice. The following day I walked to the library at Har Atzofim and sought out the darkest possible room. The microfilm lab was empty, and I decided to make it my private composition studio for the time being. I shut the door and sat in the dark. Nothing came to mind. Or rather, too many things came to mind, but none of them felt "pure". I left after a half hour, somewhat dejected, and returned to the bare bunk-bedded dorm room I had been renting for 50 shekels a month.

The following morning I returned to the darkened microfilm room and remained for an hour, then another hour. Nothing new. I spent several days trekking to the library, waiting in vain. One day, at long last, I managed to achieve a kind of thought vacuum. No material entered or left my brain; it was a mental zone akin to meditation. After a seemingly interminable period during which the 'nothing' manifested itself, a sound wandered into my head. It was not what I had expected. It was a beat. I attempted to push it away, but it remained stuck in my consciousness. So I began trying to divine where the rhythm wanted to go, in which direction it tended to grow. It was in this moment that I began discovering my 'voice' as a composer.

Bartók certainly believed that composition couldn't be taught. But Hajdu - a Hungarian of the following generation - communicated to me a vital creative lesson: the necessity of listening in silence. Our perpetually distracted society doesn't place a whole lot of value on listening. We are asked to absorb information at a breathtaking pace, with scant time to subject it to processing and critical analysis. The highly networked information age may be wonderful for gathering materials, but it cannot help us to synthesize them and produce something substantive. To do this, we need time alone with only our thoughts, and maybe not even those.

Morton Feldman sums it up eloquently. Here's a poignant excerpt from an interview with Walter Zimmermann. The whole text can be found here.

FELDMAN: Who said it recently? I think it was Paul Valéry, that when something is beautiful, it is tragic. And I think the implication for me as I see it is that something that is beautiful is made in isolation. And tragedy in a sense is a kind of psychic flavor of this loneliness. And I don't think it's a reaction of some of the young people against art. And I don't think it makes any difference really what kind of art they make, or whom they follow. I think the reaction is against being lonely. And I think that the whole social change among young artists and their concerns for being together has a lot to do with this. They can't bear this loneliness.

ZIMMERMANN: I can very much imagine that you're lonely, because that's the basic aura of your music.

FELDMAN: I mean it just in a sense of divorcing oneself from just the kind of cameraderie and group spirit in the sense that the young people seem to share together ... Just the idea of just going into a room and having to work six or seven hours because he has to do what he has to do. That's the price we have to pay. And I don't feel they want to pay that price. And it has nothing to do with art. They're always on the phone. They're either here or they're there.

ZIMMERMANN: There's certainly righteousness in what you're saying.

FELDMAN: But God bless them, and good luck to them ... and all I could wish them in life is to be lonely.

Rakim: The Rhyme Got Rougher

2006-01-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

The other day I revisited Eric B. and Rakim's album "Paid in Full". It brought back the moment I first popped the tape in my cassette deck, when my musical consciousness was permanently altered. Rakim led a revolution in rhythm, freeing it from the confines of the barline; what Stravinsky did for concert music, what Charlie Parker did for jazz, Rakim did for rap music. Over the years, the ripples of innovation from his first three albums have spread widely, first throughout the hip-hop scene, then throughout all popular music and beyond.

I often think of the history of rap music as being divided into two periods, Before and After Rakim. In the early days, I remember rap music from Harlem and the Bronx: Fat Back Man, Grand Master Flash, then Run DMC, UTFO, Kurtis Blow, Schooly D, and Stetasonic. New Ro was definitely on the outside fringes, but the echoes soon subsumed lower Westchester, spawning Heavy D and the Boyz, Pete Rock, & C.L. Smooth from money-earnin' Mount Vernon and our own Brand Nubian. Most of my friends on the track team memorized all the rhymes, so I did too; you had to know "Rappers Delight" and "White Line" by heart, later "It's Like That" and "Roxanne Roxanne", otherwise you would be mercilessly taunted on the bus.

1987 was an indelible year: Public Enemy released "Yo, Bumrush the Show!" and Boogie Down Productions came out with "Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hiphop". But nothing could have presaged what Rakim was about to drop. The incisive rhymes on "Paid in Full" surged forth in an infectious flow; enjambment manifested in a brand new way; Rakim strung 3- 4- and even 5-syllable rhymes across the 'barline', folded rhymes within eachother, displaced stresses, melted one rhyme into the next, all with a smooth and hypnotizing delivery that made it easy to forget a revolution was taking place. In this way Rakim's arrival mirrored the 'quiet storms' of Debussy or Meredith Monk, innovators who forged entirely new paths without hitting the listener over the head.

It is not only Rakim's rhythmic freshness, but also his ability to create and maintain a consistent language, that defines him as a compositional maverick. He fashions catchphrases, epigraphs, hooks, and metaphors to act as signifiers. He develops unusual syntax, morphs nouns into verbs, redesigns sentence structure to suit his lyrical needs. Rakim's innovations cannot be separated from his musical grammar; they are part and parcel of the same root system, presented in a constant, uniform, and logical way, defined by clear structural limits, parameters, and motivic cells. As in the music of many great composers, this clarity and consistency of language empowers listeners to make connections, to hear the music in larger phrases; it draws us - consciously or unconsciously - into Rakim's musical and metaphysical world.

Over the years I've noticed that much of the scholarship on rap music shies away from hard musical analysis. This may be because writers do not often possess the training to address music-theoretical issues, or it may simply be that they don't find such issues relevant or attractive to discuss. Of course, with most music (that which Duke Ellington refers to as "the other kind") it doesn't really matter, as the materials are largely imitative. However, the trend of ignoring analytical/theoretical issues does a great disservice to complex and thought-provoking rap music by lumping it together with all the rest. In saying this, I don't mean to dismiss the importance of culturally-based scholarship; I simply mean to emphasize that outstanding music transcends its cultural context, and this truism begs to be recognized.

Naturally, all music is created within a cultural framework, and the history of a particular music cannot be divorced from its context. But its influence, importance, and resonance most certainly can. Therefore when technical innovations occur, it behooves writers to acknowledge those innovations independently, rather than treating them as though they have little relevance outside the milieu in which they were engendered. Many of the groundbreaking discoveries in pop music during the last 25 years have taken place within the medium of rap music, but the one-dimensional lens of cultural contextualization tends to trivealize these innovations and marginalizes their importance.

A cursory glance at the history of jazz scholarship in America provides a sobering lesson. The great jazz artists of the 40s, 50s, and 60s - Ellington, Basie, Parker, Monk, Mingus, Dolphy, Coltrane, Evans, Davis, etc etc etc - are still relegated to one separate (albeit large) chapter in the history of American music. Why do serious technical discussions of their work, even today, remain largely neglected? I would chalk it up to a lack of engagement with profound levels of musical structure in these artists' work. During their lifetimes, there wasn't even a sufficient vocabulary to discuss their discoveries or acknowledge their achievements. I hope some of these issues will be resolved for rap music in the near future by a new generation of writers and thinkers who will choose to delve deeply into the rich and sophisticated technique of visionary artists such as Rakim.

Some groundbreaking rap albums in the decade following Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full":

Public Enemy (1988): It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Beastie Boys (1989): Paul's Boutique
Ice Cube (1990): Amerikkka's Most Wanted
Quest (1991): The Low End Theory
Pharcyde (1992): BizarreRide
Wu-Tang Clan (1993): Enter the Wu-Tang Clan
Common (1994) Resurrection
Nas (1994) Illmatic
The Roots (1995): Do You Want More?
Outkast (1996): Atliens
Mos Def and Talib Kweli (1998): Blackstar
Kook Keith (1999): Black Elvis/Lost in Space
Eminem (2000): The Marshall Mathers LP

Bill Bolcom: at least you have a piece

2005-12-01T02:55:00.000-05:00

The cancellation of a performance is a difficult pill for a composer to swallow, especially at a time in his/her life when opportunities may be few. During my student days at the University of Michigan, a singer once cancelled my premiere at the last minute. Disappointed, and feeling powerless and depressed, I showed up at Bill Bolcom's office for a lesson and related how bummed out I was. "Well, at least you have a piece!" he shrugged. "That's the important thing." I walked out of his office feeling miserable. 'He just doesn't understand!" I fumed. But of course he did understand. It has happened to Bill as it happened to me that day as it shall happen to all composers, for all eternity.

It can be seductive, even comforting, to recast the premiere - as opposed to the writing of the piece - as the milestone event. After all, hearing a work one has written for the first time is a significant occasion. And the giving of place and time to a work's utterance, the publicity, and the press attention, can all add gravity and tension to the moment of realization. But -- perhaps especially because I am a chronic reviser -- I consider premieres overrated. The birth of the piece ought to be celebrated most by the composer, with all that follows being secondary -- maybe a close secondary, but still secondary. For it is the act of creation where the transformative magic first happens, and neither glitz nor glamour can usurp its place. And after the premiere, and the post-premiere party, and the various other performances, reviews, and perhaps recordings it might or might not receive, what inevitably remains is - the piece. And noone other than future performers or audiences who decide that a piece is worth their time, can grant that work a 'life' of its own.

Bill, in his infinite (or perhaps finite, but substantial) wisdom, awakened in me a feeling of gratitude for having been the vessel for the creation of a work of art, an act of great spiritual power. Perhaps the possibility to revise is still a greater power. But that's a topic for another day....

Playing John Cage

2005-11-11T04:57:00.000-05:00

My first exposure to John Cage's music came in eighth grade at age 14. I had begun work on an orchestral piece, and my parents decided that I should show my music to a composer. They brought me to a professor at the Manhattan School of Music who happened to live around the corner from our house. I took along my magnum-opus-in-progress, ambitiously titled "Nova". Perhaps without realizing that I was intimidated (it was the first time I had showed my work to anyone outside my friends and family), the prof glanced over it and remarked dismissively, "This is too square. You must instead write a piece for clarinet and voice, with no barlines." No barlines! I had thought "Nova" was adventurous; it even had a measure in 7/8 meter. "Do you know the music of John Cage?" the prof queried. "Isn't he the guy who wrote the piece with no notes?" I ventured, revealing my mistrust. "John Cage is a genius, a genius!" he exhorted, and for a good deal longer than 4'33" he pontificated on the many ways in which Cage had changed the course of music, while I cowered in shame and continued skepticism.

It was 7 years before I went near a composition teacher again. But I was intrigued by the memory of those strange and vivid - sometimes rambling and random, often humorous - Cage books and scores shoved under my nose on that frightening afternoon. An inner voice continually mused, "what if there's something profound to all that kooky stuff?" But I was too busy delving into counterpoint, fugue, jazz harmony, or Yemenite women's folk chants to spend time contemplating silence. Of course, Cage's name came up now and then, in composition seminars over the years or as a foil in musical conversations, usually in a joking context or in response to an unsolvable question.

In 1992 Cage walked into a hospital in New York and unceremoniously died. I remember the day vividly; I was listening to 'New Sounds' show on WNYC, and John Schaefer was presenting an all-day broadcast of Cage's works. By this time I had already come to know and appreciate many of Cage's earlier works, like the Studies for Prepared Piano, Aria, Clarinet Sonata, and the Constructions. I had a few extra cassettes (remember those?), so I decided to record the show. This broadcast was my first exposure to many of Cage's songs and to the String Quartet, which I listened to numerous times, mesmerized by the calmly shifting sonorities and the particular quality of timelessness. Yet I still found no way into Cage's later works, which seemed to be in the realm of either the purely comic or philosophical, or both, but hardly within the boundaries of what I considered to be 'music'. And I thought that I had a pretty open mind.

Until one fateful day a percussionist at the University of Michigan asked me to take part in her graduation recital, and I agreed to play. "It's all John Cage," she added gingerly, leaving me an opportunity to back out - which I luckily didn't. One of the pieces we played was "Four", a late composition in which stopwatches are used to determine general time frames of note placement (or non-placement) within the piece. Rehearsing it left me quizzical, but performing it proved to be profoundly moving. Before that concert, Cage's later music had seemed to me to be about the concept rather than the experience. But that evening I learned that playing John Cage was, in fact, only about the experience. These were truly ego-less pieces, at least as far as the composer was concerned. We, the performers, weren't compelled to worry about what he had wanted or intended; instead, playing Cage's music encouraged a heightened awareness by bringing the singularity of each moment into full focus. During the concert I felt what I can only describe as a palpable sense of 'becoming' -- we becoming the music and it becoming us. That transformation, a bona fide alteration of consciousness, rendered spiritual the process of realizing his music. I suspect that for Cage, too, it was listening to - above and beyond the act of writing - music that was the truly spiritual experience.

Hearing or performing a work that lasts for zero minutes and zero seconds - or one which lasts for 639 years - is bound to alter one's sense of perception. Engendering such a fundemental transformation in the listener would seem to be one of the primary goals for which most creative artists strive. Does that mean that 0'00" or ASLAP are 'great' works? Maybe it doesn't matter. Cage's music encourages us to consider whether we, as audience members, should even bother seeking greatness in a work. If a piece of art transforms our way of thinking and feeling about the world, it has already accomplished a pretty hefty task.

I find it difficult to reach clear and definite conclusions about Cage's music. I acknowledge feeling uncomfortable referring to him a 'genius' as the now-retired prof did; but then again, I don't relish conferring 'genius' status on anyone, because it distances me from, rather than drawing me towards, their work. I expect that my thoughts about John Cage will continue to morph and evolve, a state of constant flux and spontenaeity which he likely would have endorsed and appreciated.

Andriessen family values

2005-10-26T04:56:00.000-05:00

10 years ago I was studying in Amsterdam with Louis Andriessen. I remember showing up one afternoon at his house on the Keizersgracht for a lesson. After the usual chit-chat he asked what I was writing, and I began to reply, "well, I have these two ideas..." "Too many!" he interrupted. Louis was joking, but he also wasn't. He has always been adept at encouraging students to reduce their ideas to the most basic elements. A decade later, I struggle with the same questions, both as a composer and an educator. Though I don't teach privately, I often tackle this issue with students in the New York Youth Symphony's Making Score program.

Young composers usually move too quickly between ideas; by this I don't mean that they use too much material, but rather that they use too many organizing principles. In my case, Louis was concerned that I recognize the musical building blocks already inherent in the musical material. So he kept encouraging me to reduce, reduce, reduce, until I was face to face with the most rudimentary gestures. He would ask, "ok, but what comes before that? and before that?" One might speculate that his "minimalist" aesthetic had something to do with this reductionist philosophy of teaching, but I think he was trying to promote a more general awareness; he was shining a light into the murkier levels of creative thinking, awakening my mind to formal structures and functionality on heretofore unexplored micro- and macro-levels.

Living in the so-called real world, we are often working on the most superficial layers of consciousness. Just addressing daily tasks and keeping the wheels of life turning uses up a great deal of energy. But as composers our calling is to access worlds hidden underneath the surface, worlds of philosophy, of theatre, of mathematics, of human instinct. Getting to the essence of a musical idea requires concentration, contemplation, and patience. Yet in the age of computers, giving full attention to musical detail can feel like dredging up a rusty relic from the past. It's so easy now to extend or shorten larges sections by cutting and pasting, to transpose with a click, to instantly move material from here to there, to add phat fonts and impressive graphics. Ironically, with the world at our fingertips, attention to the most crucial problems of form can be overlooked. In these moments of short shrift, it can be useful - even critical - to remember that technology is as dependent as anything else on the coherence of formal structures. Computers communicate through various layers of protocol; you may be working on the application/software level, the network level, or the transport level, but ultimately these layers work in tandem and are therefore dependent on each other. For a system to work as a whole, all layers must be built on consistent organizing principles; if the root level is strong, the top level will be correspondingly strong. The same applies for art.

Louis wanted me to be aware of what was happening in my music, even at levels where I was unaccustomed to poke around, and I feel grateful that he hammered these concepts home. I believe he was less interested that I reveal those levels to the listeners than he was determined that I should be able to recognize them myself. So along with the freedom to make our own aesthetic choices, we should shoulder the responsibility to analyze our own work - reducing it to the simplest elements and building it back up again. It is a powerful and empowering process, one which can help lend a work greater economy and coherence, while guiding us to become deeper and more resourceful artists.

Article in NewMusicBox

2005-09-21T12:29:00.000-05:00

Here's my article posted this week, called "Making the I-Hop". I hope it's helpful!

William Albright: a lesson in disobedience

2005-06-12T23:11:00.000-05:00

Here is a letter that I wrote upon hearing of William Albright's tragic and premature death at age 53. It was published in the SCI Newsletter by David Gompper as a tribute. Bill was a complex person who battled for 30 years with alcoholism, a disease which ultimately took his life. I encourage more people to get to know Albright's music, which is available through C.F. Peters. There's a fine tribute to him, written by Evan Chambers, which you can read here.

A Lesson in Disobedience
(Derek Bermel remembers Albright)

I've just heard the news about Bill Albright, and needless to say I am shocked and devastated. I have always held him in the highest esteem as an insightful and caring teacher, as well as a brilliant composer, performer, and scholar. But he was also a person with an enormously big heart, and that is what I will miss the most. During my last two years in New York, we would often talk at great length about life, philosophy, food, love, the arts, politics, or any number of other subjects which fired his wild imagination.

He was utterly devoted to the University of Michigan, and rightly considered himself in the teaching legacy of his mentor Ross Lee Finney. Bill leaves behind an awesome teaching legacy of more than twenty-five years, and hundreds of students all over the world. I know that I speak for many of them when I acknowledge that the world has lost some of its vivid color with his passing. As a teacher, he was masterful and penetrating, and always, always sincere. His questions reached to the very essence of the issue at hand - "But is it radical?" "So, what will you do now that you're a great composer?" - yet the ambiguous nature of his comments demanded that we solve the riddles of creation ourselves - "What a gorgeous mess!" He knew when to say "I don't know," and he said it often. But sometimes I could detect, in his enigmatic smirk, a hint that he did indeed know, but wouldn't tell. I can still hear him telling me, quite earnestly, "Derek, disobey your teachers. Disobey us!"

For me, his most inspiring lesson was his total and uncompromising musicianship. "We teach composition by example," he would often say, and he meant it. When Bill Albright was at his best, he was as powerful and ingenious composer as any; I dare say that his clarinet quintet is one of the most perfect pieces of music I have ever played - or heard, for that matter. He was a deftly skilled contrapuntist and an elegantly funky rhythmitician. But I have always felt that the stunning beauty of his writing was wrapped in the details - a quirky "off" note in the harpsichord melody, just in the most annoying spot; a dazzling and grotesque flourish in the tuba; a haunting chord in the vibraphone lingering a bit too long - for me, these subtleties give Albright's music its distinct and pungent flavor. His expressive markings are a testament both to his humor and to how passionately he felt the music in his soul: "Strident, shrill, shrieking", "spit it!": Abiding Passions (1988) "Suddenly ecstatic": Quintet for Clarinet and Strings (1987) "Apoplectically, ": Seven Deadly Sins (1974) "Maestoso Grunge": Pit Band (1993) "Half-lit, smoky ostinato": Rustles of Spring (1994)

How much poorer our world is without his many Flights of Fancy. I will miss him immensely. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

DB, Aberdeen, Scotland, Oct. 1998

Henri Dutilleux: «On ne peut pas tout aimer...»

2005-06-11T04:14:00.000-05:00

This is mantra which Dutilleux has reiterated in writings and interviews. I suppose it’s his way of saying “trust yourself,” a statement of pride in asserting one’s individuality in the world. It reminds me that what makes us uniquely human is our ability to absorb and synthesize material, to reason, to develop tastes, to fall in love with people, places, smells, sounds, memories. I have often mused on this phrase, especially when I have felt forces – be they artistic, economic, or socio-political – conspiring to push me strongly against my nature. Because of their grammatical construction in the negative, because of their insistence nuanced with gentleness, his words urge a generous defiance. For D'lux, music must be grounded in a context, be it a sense of place, a philosophical idea, a point of view, or a cultural milieu. In many conversations throughout the ten years I've known him, he has always insisted that composers should not shy away from what they love, that they should resist shutting out influences simply because they do not fit the “style du jour”. His own music was certainly neglected by those in his own country who advocated a "pureté de style".

It’s not an assertion that we as composers ought to make pastiche or collage of that which we admire or strive to emulate, but rather that we should invite what deeply moves us into the music we create. And that we should not feel embarrassed about rejecting that which we don’t love, since we can’t love everything. Only Jesus could do that, and he was half-divine, or so the Christians say…. As artists, we should treasure and embrace our likes and dislikes; they are character traits which cannot be obliterated by force nor by fashion, though they do (hopefully) evolve and change.

I suppose another interpretation of D’lux’s mantra might be “to thine own self be true”, or, more accurately, the contrapositive: “feel not the pressure to be true to that which is not thine own.” I have seen an almost childlike reverence in D'lux when he describes a piece of music that he loves, be it Ravel or Sarah Vaughan. And I find myself reminded how precious our tastes are; they define our musical core; they are what – originally – drew us inexorably to music one the most elemental level, and they guide us towards uncharted territories that we can explore with confidence and passion.

maazel tov?

2005-05-22T21:44:00.000-05:00

Last week I kept noticing articles about Lorin Maazel's opera '1984'. They bring up a number of interesting questions regarding the role of the artist in so-called "vanity" productions. I can't help but feel confused about the whole notion of vanity performances and recordings these days. As a composer from a family of modest means, I suppose I should be in the 'camp' opposed to such projects. It seems to me, though, that almost any event in the world of concert music - not to mention popular music - can be viewed as a vanity if one traces its financial roots back far enough. In the U.S., donations from private patrons account for a large percentage of the money which funds commissions, performances, and recordings. What is the difference if the composer 'raises' thousands of tax-deductible dollars (or pays for it out of his/her own pocket) or the performing organization does it? Since long before the days of Madame von Meck and Prince Lichnowsky, composers have been relying on wealthy individuals to subsidize their latest experiments. Gesualdo was rich and funded all his own performances; Monteverdi was indebted to the Gonzagas for years, and later became 'Maestro di capella' at St. Mark's in Venice. In the larger scope of history, does it matter?

Part of the problem seems to be that Covent Garden is government subsidized (something we luckily don't have to worry about here in the good ol' U.S. of A.), and therefore some folks understandably feel that Maazel's largely self-funded work compromises the usual process of commissioning, which is designed - one hopes - to ensure artistic quality/integrity. But if we subscribe to that philosophy, then we have to tackle the prickly question: what do those words - quality and integrity - really mean, and what do they mean specifically in the U.K.? In recent seasons, the London Sinfonietta has commissioned Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead and Moby curated the 'Meltdown' at the South Bank Centre. Is it a sellout or a branching out? Who's to know? What does Ollie think? What does the audience think? What does the London Times think? And, more importantly, what does the Queen think?

Yesterday I read another article in the New York Times, entitled 'A City Opera Conductor with Connections', about Atsushi Yamada, the conductor whose close connections with Sony helped fuel a City Opera tour to Japan. Hell, We're living in a town where the mayor bought himself into office, in a country where the president bought himself into office. Why can't a conductor? At least he hasn't started any wars (except in the press).

The question is often posed: has Maazel 'paid his dues' as a composer? I am not sure this is a particularly relevant issue vis a vis the quality of the work. Who, for example, can say that Maazel's expertise as a conductor does not adequately prepare him for composing an opera? I'm not sure that writing artsongs would have necessarily prepared him any better. Ives wrote lots of those; would he have written a good opera?

Another question, potentially more troublesome, at least for appearances' sake, is: how much additional money did Covent Garden (and City Opera, etc etc) put into this production? And, by extension, were other composers (or conductors or performers, depending on the situation) denied opportunities as a result of this project? Herein lie, perhaps, the roots of most objections to 'vanity' projects. Because, as anyone in this non-for-profit 'business' knows, an arts organization's financial commitment doesn't end with the commission, nor with the rehearsals, nor the performance. A large amount of money goes into operating expenses, salaries, and P.R. One might legitimately ask: are the resources of this organization being squandered on a project which has being presented only because money was thrown at the company? And does the organization reap any particular benefits from this production, or will it merely spend time deflecting criticism? And where is the responsibility to serving the public good in all this?

Quality control is a tricky issue. Standards are tricky too, as anyone who has attempted to pore over the minutae of 'No Child Left Behind' can confirm. It'll be interesting to observe whether such 'vanity' events become more common as our we scrap the estate tax and our government cedes more and more responsibility for arts initiatives, preservation, and funding to the private sector.

first neuron fired

2005-05-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

This is the official start of my blog! eighth blackbird was in town this weekend to play at the People's Symphony series downtown. They sounded first rate. I have been officially put on notice to make all final corrections, as they are going to start memorizing "Tied Shifts" imminently.

At some point, you have to send a piece - like a child - out into the world, whether because it's being published, recorded, or memorized. At this point, you have to "let go", and that can be hard. The French poet Paul Valéry wrote "A poem is never finished, only abandoned," and I suppose this holds true for music (and art as well, since Leonardo da Vinci apparently uttered an almost an identical phrase several centuries earlier). One almost always finds at least one small detail, in print, on recording, or in performance that one wishes could be altered retroactively. Alas, it is permanent for eternity, or at least until the next edition (thus: errata lists, which destroy the neatness of publication, but preserve the mystery of unfinished-ness...). To extend the metaphor, children certainly depart from their parents as unfinished works. One could well argue that our entire lives are unfinished works. So putting the "finishing touches" on a piece of music, though often a relief, often feels like a futile ritual for me.

Nonetheless, here I go.