A case against the 60 minute concert

My last two posts have dealt with my experience during the Berlin Seminar 2014 held by the German Fulbright Commission and open to Fulbrighters throughout Europe. These topics should interest the music community because 1) the group involved are the demographic that the populist movement is after-- 22-30, young professional or pre-professional, educated, open to new experiences, and worldly, all while still encasing a huge difference in socio-economic backgrounds, race, nationality, and just about any other background criteria you could add together; and 2) all the posts directly deal with problems proposed by various critics in recent years, from programming to style of concert experience to marketing.

This post is a bit different, as it recounts more recent experiences and thoughts, most notably the idea of the 60 minute concert.

A recent post on Greg Sandow's blog by Julia Villagra discusses how she attracts audiences to her concert/dinner series Tertulia. The series is fairly successful in NYC, filling an interesting niche as far as dinner entertainment. She's also far from the first person I've heard doing this--I have a very good friend, David Whitwell, who has also organized quite a few similar events in NYC, often with free improv groups.

First, I'd like to applaud Julia and Tertulia for running a successful program in NYC. It's not easy, and it's obvious a huge amount of work has been done. However, a few things bothered me in the post, namely when talking about the programming of the evenings.

Tertulia is intentionally cozy and intimate, with no stage to elevate the performers above the audience. Audience members in the front are seated just far enough away from the musicians to prevent a renegade bow from striking someone’s knee. The distance between artist and audience is gone, and a palpable energy fills the room.

Small concert settings are fantastic--the connection with the audience is palpable, something that's difficult to achieve with audience members sitting in nose-bleed seats needing binoculars to see the stage. However, there are a number of practical issues with these set-ups that critics seem to not address.

I've been attending a week long festival run by the Kunglinga Musikhogskolan (Royal College of Music), where I'm visiting on my Fulbright. The series is their annual student composition festival, and thanks to partnerships with a few organizations in town, the concerts don't all happen on campus. I attended a few at a local, and well established, new music organizations site, Fylkingen. The space is fairly small, allowing for around 60-100 chairs to be set-up, depending on the size of the ensemble The room is flat, and chairs get placed as close to the group as possible. Since many performances include electronics, space is reserved for the mixing console, and areas are often taken up by multiple projectors. I only have one major issue with the place:

The lack of a stage.

There's always talk about how a stage removes the performers from the audience, how it places some sort of barrier between everyone. And yet no one complains at pop concerts about the stage. The barrier is often much more physical there, especially for major bands. It's not just a rise and where the seats are, but a series of guards behind bike-rack barricades, purposefully separating the audience from the stars. And yet no critics of popular music strike against the stage.

The reason I dislike experiencing concerts in a flat room is from a purely practical sense--I can't see the band. Unless you're in the first couple rows, no matter how the seating is arranged, there's a head in the way. You turn this way and that, and yet I still can't see everyone. Judging from the picture in attached to the article, I can see the same thing--people at the end of the long table craning their necks more, people in the round tables on the right looking around people. For me as an audience member this is a huge turn-off. It makes for quite an uncomfortable experience (and remember, we hear music with not only our ears, but our eyes).

Beyond the sight-line issue, there are other practical issues about these sorts of space, ranging from acoustics to availability of a piano. These issues do not mean that a concert series cannot be successful. On the contrary, many great series are set-up in this fashion. However, if we're going to report on how these things work, we should put in all considerations, including how the space dictates the programming (no works for extended techniques or prepared piano when there's no grand piano available, for instance).

I recognize that traditionalists may be slower to embrace the Tertulia approach; we present only 60 to 75 minutes of music compared to a more standard 90 to 120 minutes, and have made intermissions a more substantial and deliberate part of the concert experience.

This is such an odd statement to me. First off, the idea of the 90-120 minutes of music concert experience vs. the 60-75 minutes of music. I've been organizing concerts on and off for longer than Tertulia has been around, and the 60-75 minute recital was the norm then for a chamber performance. It was a norm as an undergrad planning performances, it was the norm when planning HS concerts as part of my secondary instrumental methods class (or even shorter, depending on skill and such), the norm when I planned my senior recital (way back in '06!), the norm when I helped plan concerts with our short-lived group in NYC, dfe (though we went past 60 minutes, but split it up with more breaks), and the norm running concerts at UMKC. 60 minutes of music became 90 minutes of program with the changes of personnel, breaks, etc. The only groups going over the 60-75 minute mark were symphonies, and hardly even then! Most symphonies I've attended in the last few years have done the same, usually settling in around the 75 minutes of music. I recently attended Bruckner's 8th Symphony here in Stockholm. Depending on conductor, this piece runs from about 75-85 minutes...and it was the only piece on the entire concert. I left feeling a bit sad--it was an afternoon concert and I could have gone for another few pieces, with a 20-30 minute intermission for drinks in the middle!

I had the same complaints from people at the Berlin Seminar--they wanted more music! The program ran about an hour. And now I'm going to say something that some may find contentious--young people want long concerts.

Have you been to local pop show? How do those evening usually go down? 2-3 bands play. In a 3 band set-up, the opener plays a short set, maybe 25-30 minutes. Then there's a 15-20 minute break for turnover where everyone heads to the bar (first band included). The next band plays a full set, roughly 45 minutes (or the average length of a record). Then there's another break, sometimes longer because the main act has more happening. Finally, the main group comes on. This group plays at least a full set. There are plenty of instances of fans being angry when a band plays less than what is expected. Jack White played a 55 minute set and fans were enraged. I won't go into all the many different expectations different audiences have, but if we're going to talk about engaging a young audience, let's talk about what young audiences want in more concrete terms.

They want an evening out. If they're going to a concert, they want an experience. This has been tossed around by lots of people. But what's that experience? Is it to sit through 60-75 minutes of music with 2 or 3 breaks for food service then a longer, nice dining experience afterwards? For some, most definitely. For others, they want what they actually get at a club: 2-3 groups, each playing sets of music, chances to socialized before, during breaks, and after, and the feeling that everyone involved gave their all in the performances. They don't want Scott Stapp coming onstage drunk and falling over. And they don't want to be babied with a little music that "might be challenging." If they are there for a concert, they are there for a concert! Give it to them! This is something Fylkingen often does very well: several sets in an evening, giving me an entire night's worth of enjoyment. Compare that to my sadness today when Pierrot Lunaire ended, and I realized "that's it for the concert..." I love Pierrot Lunaire, but to have my experience end after 45 minutes on a Saturday afternoon, I felt a little dazed and lost...

For example, clapping is encouraged between movements. Or if a piece is long, lasting 35 minutes or so, I will program only part of it, maybe a movement or two, a choice I sometimes make to keep the evening balanced (and to minimize fidgeting).

Man, I'd sure love to get beyond this clapping between movements talk. It happens. It happened during Bruckner's 8th in Stockholm (along with even longer coughing, to which Alan Gilbert turned around and smiled, giving the audience a nice chuckle). It happened at Les Troyens after a few particularly juicy arias. It happens quite often. And who usually poo-poos the clapping? Not the conductors or the performers, who are usually gracious. No, it's the audience. To take a phrase from libertarian thought: One person's freedom ends where another person's begins. Some people are for clapping, some are not. I don't much care. Neither do most young people. Can we drop this now?

The bigger thing is that last statement "if a piece is long, lasting 35 minutes or so, I will only program part of it...and to minimize fidgeting."

That is the definition of pandering. This approach is saying "Hey, the audience really can't deal with a 35 minute piece. I mean, 35 minutes, that's like, nearly an act of a play. Or maybe the introductory act of a full length film. And, I mean, seriously, it's Beethoven, that's over most people's heads...it makes them uncomfortable. So why put them through that difficulty?"

Taking movements of a longer piece to balance an evening can work. Many multi-movement works are conceived of as wholes, but at the same time have enough separate character to work on their own. Deciding to play a single movement from a larger work because of programming considerations is fine. Deciding to do it because your performers can only handle parts of the piece is also fine, for pedagogical reasons. We went over that pretty extensively when I learned about planning concerts. Younger groups play shorter concerts because their stamina isn't high yet. More advanced groups may be ready for parts of a Beethoven symphony, but the scherzo is a bit too fast and difficult for them. Or the group may be missing a crucial solo instrument (say, an English Horn), and so they cut a movement. These are major programming considerations.

To limit fidgeting should never, ever, be a consideration.

Finally, the idea of cost/benefit. The price of arts concerts is on the rise, as are concert prices everywhere. Major pop tour prices have risen with the cost of transportation, the rising cost of local labor, and tons of other factors. Many tours offer tickets ranging from a few hundred dollars to lawn seats or general admission in the $30-40 range. Ever since I was 14 I've gone to these large concerts--I was at the first OzzFest, tearing up sod and getting contact highs (which for me is dangerous since I'm allergic to pot...so not only did I tear up sod, I also threw up on it). Once inside at, say, the last major tour I hit, Rockstar's Mayhem Tour, you're treated to a day of music. The upcoming Mayhem tour features 19 bands over 4 stages  with seemingly perennial headliner Avenged Sevenfold, Korn, Cannibal Corpse, and a host of other groups. Korn played Kansas City last year, and tickets ran $75 at the small theater--small theater, high demand, high price. Mayhem Tour as it rolls through Indianapolis/Noblesville has lawn tickets at $38.50 up to The Pit tickets (front row center mosh pit) for $250. And, of course, the venue makes a fair bit from drink and food sales, while bands make some extra scratch at merch tents. Festivals also usually have various vendors set-up. I remember a festival that came through Camden, NJ when I lived out East working for Concert Quality Sound--The Download Festival hosted by Seagate Technology. The headliners were The Killers, which I got to hear and see their soundcheck after I set-up a Seagate tent featuring the Frag Dolls. While bands were doing soundchecks, I was setting up a tent with a ton of PS3s, HDMI splitters, several plasma screens, and a basic sound system.

This is one of my favourite memories of working for CQS, because when I got to meet and play against the Frag Dolls. Honestly, I don't know who was on the team at the time, because I had lost track of professional gaming by this point. But staying and playing a few games of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and getting all the way up to 2nd during one match is quite a highlight. Along with the group saying "Wait, who is that in second?!?", me timidly raising my hand, and then the joint scream of "SOUND GUY!!!" Sound guy had game, once...

But this is what the young crowd expects. They expect that for their price of admission they're going to get more than 60-75 minutes of music. For $100, I better get a nice meal, with a glass of the house red on the house, and the ability to buy more glasses at a reasonable rate (I'd guess $7-10 a glass). And I want more than 60 minutes of music.

Critics and pundits keep talking about drawing in young people, but seem to completely ignore the culture we've been brought up in. The club scene isn't just getting drinks, it's having an entire evening in a club, music for 3-4 hours, drinks flowing all night. It's getting dressed up to hit the club--you don't show up to, say, The Pool After Dark at Harrah's in jeans and a tee-shirt. You'd get turned away immediately (well, unless they're designer fitted jeans). When I discussed Metal or New Music Concert I bring up the fact that almost all these experiences have dress codes, whether written like at Harrah's or unwritten like the metal scene in Stockholm. And people learn these codes quickly if they want to fit in. And just like you'd never catch me at The Pool, you'd probably never catch me at Tertulia--for $100 for dinner and a concert, I expect something pretty spectacular. Blame that on my humble Midwest roots.

This turned into a bit more of an angry rant than I had intended. I am truly happy that Tertulia is doing well, and that Julie et al have found their niche. But if we're going to put up these groups as examples, we have to be willing to be critical. Tertulia would never fly in Indianapolis, Kansas City, any most Midwest towns. I'd guess it'd struggle a bit in Chicago, but could find an audience. It'd probably do well in Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Other Eastern towns like Philly or Baltimore it may work in, but it would depend on getting the right clientele in early--the groups are there, but they're not as abundant as in NYC.

Cost/benefit changes with location. In Indianapolis, for that $100 price tag is incredibly different than in NYC or Stockholm, Sweden. It's incredibly important to remember those local differences--again something that seems glossed over in many conversations.

And it's time we stopped lowering expectations of the concert and give people what they want--more music, a memorable experience, and something worth coming back for. Read Jon Silpayamanant's blog about his series to see what people in Indianapolis/Louisville expect. Man, a show at a restaurant/bar lasting that long...If there's hookah involved, I'm beyond sold. I'd end up dropping $100 on dolma, shisha, wine, and tips for the band.

That's what my friends expect going to a concert--an all day/night affair worth putting on clean clothes, and maybe shining up my boots...

N'ah, I'll wear the Vans.

Conditions, preconceptions, and assumptions

There's been a flurry of activity these days revolving around those buzzwords. Jeffrey Nytch wrote a case-study on how he took an idea for a symphony, and spun it into a commission and performances. If you haven't read it, and gone through all the comments, go for it. It shows some classic ideas in internet-ethics...namely, read the whole article, read the entire reply, and take a moment to think about it. Jeffrey and I actually came to a pretty good understanding, once we got done circling each other for a few test rounds (I'm sure the internet cried...I have a feeling it started out looking like two boxers squaring off, only to go into the middle and shake hands).

Now, to build off of those comments, as well as previous posts. One of the main points I've been making is philosophical, a "chicken and the egg" type koan: piece/idea or consumer first?

I'm purposefully using the word consumer not audience. Yes, it is giving it a negative impression. That was my intent. "You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!" is true of literature, but not of blogs, it appears. No subtlety to be had today.

Many people have said "Why can't you think about an audience? What's wrong with putting them first? Aren't you writing your music for people?" Others point to the "If you write something, and no one hears it because no one will play it, have you made music? You have to make compromises."

Those questions miss my point. We're really dealing with three things: conditions, preconceptions, and assumptions.

First, conditions. I've gotten a few commissions in my life. Nothing fancy, usually a soloist asking me for a piece, sometimes an ensemble. When someone asks me for a new piece, we go into talks--there's the nitty gritty "how many performances? How much can you send me? What's the nicest bottle of wine in your price range? I prefer Jura..." Business is business, for me an unsavory portion of what I do.

But then we get down to what does the performer need, what do they think they want, and how do we come to a consensus. These are one set of conditions.

These conditions include things such as length, instrumentation, and possibly some special requests. When you write for an orchestra, you know, roughly, what instruments are available. However, these conditions are always starting points--"So...you said unaccompanied trombone...how about trombone and electronics?" "You said you wanted it ten minutes...is seven minutes good? This idea has run it's course, so I either have to do another movement and go over ten, or sit at seven." For an orchestra, this could be doubling questions, availability of instruments (So...you're a small orchestra...can I use harp? What about two harps?), and even length issues (Hey, you said opener...you sure? I mean, I COULD do a thirty minute piece...oh, you're sure...positive? Alright, fine...).

I think of these the same way as I think of all the other conditions I set when not writing a commission--I still decide instrumentation, length, and then all the points of the piece. Personally, I always lay down conditions early in the composition process. There may be notes scattered here and there, little motives or ideas, maybe even a sketch of about a minute or so, but those are normally just used to set conditions (pitch, rhythm, form, etc.).

Then we have preconceptions. These are the ideas that we bring to the table thinking we know what's right, only to find out how wrong we were. This may be a special request from a performer (I really wanna do beat-box flute!) that doesn't jive with the composer at all. A preconception is an idea that is malleable. It's going from "I want an extended passage of sound-text in this" to incorporating the idea and technique into several passages as a timbral and rhythmic motive. These are musical preconceptions.

We change our preconceptions on a regular basis. New ideas are presented to us, and our view is changed. It's what happens after that first rehearsal, and you rush to make a flurry of changes, because what you thought a passage sounded like was not what it actually sounded like (and synthesized performance by notation software be damned!). It's hearing rumors about a certain person, being afraid for that first meeting, then realizing they're awesome. Or vice-versa. Preconceptions are bumps in the road, where if we're careful, we could end up flying into a ravine, or flying into the air on a magical carpet ride. (Point...you're totally singing one of two songs aren't you?)

Assumptions are the mind-killers. Business seems to be made of assumptions, this strange idea that, somehow, a person knows exactly what a person needs. Sometimes these assumptions pan out, but, often, they don't. An assumption is a preconception gone terribly wrong.

Apple made a big gamble with the iPhone. Job's wasn't even behind the idea at first, having to come around to it. The idea was simple: people didn't seem to want three devices for making phone calls/getting texts, getting email, and playing media. Those "dark times" pre-iPhone when people carried a BlackBerry, a phone, and an iPod. Then people switched to a BlackBerry and an iPod. Though, if you lived in NYC, it seemed it was a BlackBerry, an iPod, and something to text, usually through T-Mobile.

It was assumed people would want this product. And they were mostly right, though as time moved on, they realized just how much more people wanted mobile computers that could occasionally act as a phone rather than a phone that could somewhat act like a computer. The idea, the basic conditions (make a device capable of these three things) was sound. The assumption rang true. And now the iPhone is lauded in showing how you can identify a market and then corner it (then slowly lose it to Android, because you won't back off from other assumptions, such as "people will only use iTunes.").

But where does this work into music? What is the biggest assumption I see continuously?

"We know what the audience wants."

This is a mighty large assumption. What makes you believe you know what the audience wants? The nationwide survey done by the NEA? There's a big problem with using nationwide surveys to steer a local group--namely your group is not really working for the entire nation.

Or anecdotal evidence. My friends tell me the audience loved this piece. They applauded more loudly for Beethoven than Chittum. Obviously, more Beethoven is needed. There's also a danger here, and an assumption--that all music can be fairly judged on a single listening; that the "audience" for Beethoven is the same as for Chittum; that there is a homogeneous audience for this group.

These are dangers, mostly, of business, and we're seeing them regularly, from programming decisions to lockouts and contract issues. But these assumptions can also be dangerous for composition.

Setting out to write a piece "for an audience" means you have to ask an incredibly difficult question first: who is my audience? Marketing professionals do this all the time, and usually come up with some wonderfully "meaningful" answers, such as "Women, age 30-45, single, no kids, wanting to connect with their younger days" or "Men, age 16-24, hipster." Those demographics then get parsed into stereotypes about the group, and then the idea pandered to their exact wants.

Who is the audience for your piece? Is it the symphony audience? Which symphony? Your local symphony? What does your local symphony audience actually like? How do you know? What's your best guess?

Here's a bit of info that should free you from this question: no matter what kind of music you write, there will be an audience. I went to a metal club last night and saw two thrash bands, Insane (from Sweden), a young group that didn't even look of age to be in the club; and Deathhammer, a thrash band from Norway that was everything you'd expect from a thrash metal band from Norway, including the frontman being on some type of drugs. There were well over 100 people in attendance by the time Deathhammer took the stage.

100 people might not seem like much, but it beats many of the new music concerts I went to in Kansas City. There's an audience for this underground thrash metal, just like there's an audience for the more gloomy death metal I've seen, the most avant-garde of new music, Miley Cyrus, Massive Attack, and Beethoven. They are not all the same audience, though there is overlap.

I take a very different approach. My assumption is that there is someone, somewhere, that will probably like my music. I may not have met this person, but if I keep trying, I will. I assume if I write music that I like, that I find interesting, engaging, and moving, then more than likely, someone else will.

It's still an assumption. We can't be rid of assumptions entirely. And the point of this isn't to say "Do away with all assumptions! Assume nothing! Face all your preconceptions!" I'm not "new-age" enough for that. I accept that I will always assume things, I will always have preconceptions, and I will always deal with conditions. Instead, I offer a different path.

Change the meaning of an assumption to allow for change. Don't base assumptions on incomplete data. Don't let preconceptions become fixed in stone, and ruin meetings over your controlling nature. And push against conditions if your expression is leading you in a different direction, while accepting conditions that cannot be changed. Conditions can lead to very interesting creative moments, after all.

This is why I never think of "what the audience would like" when I set out to create a piece. I don't shoot to create an "audience pleaser." I aim to create something that doesn't deal in assumptions (beyond I assume someone will like this), challenges my preconceptions, and is always built around the push and pull of the myriad of conditions placed upon the piece. To do anything less would be to betray myself and the audience.

The audience is important, and therefore, we should kill the assumption that we know what's best for them. Why not let the audience decide?

Is "reading" music fundamental?

   In the UK, a new 224 page national education curriculum is going up for a vote in August. Somewhere in the back of the document, for a few scant pages (three to be exact), outlines the most basic ideas of music education: the purpose, aim, and target "attainment" levels for key stages 1-3 (or through age 14). The three pages are barebones, giving only the passing nod to ideas such as "use(ing) technology appropriately..." which is an area I've heard a fair bit about during the last year.

   Instead, it moves onto the subheading of the original article that brought this to my attention. Over at ClassicFm an article briefly introduced the idea that the national curriculum was changing. It waxes poetic on the beautiful idea that "music is a universal language," which, while a beautiful idea, isn't exactly true. But, again, that's for another time...

   It's the focus on music notation that caught my eye. The subheading states "by 2021 every 14 year old will be able to read music if the new curriculum is approved in August." That's a claim!

   The inclusion of being able to read notation in national curriculum's isn't new. NAfME (National Association for Music Education) has reading and notation music as a part of its national standards as well. So, I'm not surprised by the inclusion--if anything I'm somewhat surprised it's news. I'm not as up on UK educational systems, but it'd be surprising if there wasn't some cursory mention of reading and notating music at some level.

   But all this made me ask a question: is reading and writing music fundamental to a liberal arts style education?

    Seems like an odd question for someone finishing a doctorate in music composition to ask. I'm questioning whether something that for an active musician is fundamental. Or is it at that?

    Let me take this back a couple steps. What is, according to the new national curriculum in the UK, the purpose of studying music?

   "Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon"

   Alright, poetic start. Inspiring pupils to develop love music, talent as musicians, self-confidence, creativity, achievement; all great ideas. Develop critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and listen with discrimination...also all good.

   My gut reaction is, of course "Man, I hope they get more than the once a week thing I grew up with in elementary school before I joined band. That's a lot to try and fit into those 32 hours a year you see a student."

   The aims get more specific and break down three main areas

• perform, listen to, review, and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles, and traditions, including works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing, create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn an instrument, use technology appropriately
• understand and explore how music is created, produced, and communicated through pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre, structure, and appropriate musical notations.

   So it took until the last two words to sneak musical notation in, tacked onto the end of what musicians call "the fundamentals of music." But is notation really fundamental?

    What's interesting to me is everything stated above until you hit those last two words, I could teach entirely without notation. If music is a language, then one could say that performing music is like speaking, and notation is like the written word. Except, there's a fundamental difference: even great musicians can't look at a score and hear the entire symphony in their head, especially if it's a symphony they've never heard! Musicians call that skill "Audiation." I believe it was coined by Edwin Gordon, and it was probably made most famous in "The Music Man" when Harold Hill discusses the "Think System." And, yes, I know that Gordon's theories on audiation are not the same as Hill's Think System, and that, yes, "The Music Man" Came out about 13 years before Gordon coined the term. But the idea of thinking about music, hearing it in your head, then playing it dates back much further than that...

   Point being this idea that the notation isn't realized until performance. We can "hear" a great deal in our heads, especially if we train ourselves to. But it's also a more difficult skill than learning music through action. Ok, so, learning music through action. That's a big part of many music education philosophies: Kodaly is all about learning music through singing, Orff is a combination of performing on specially designed percussion instruments, singing, and dancing (originally folk dancing), and Dalcroze/Eurythmics focuses a great deal on motion, the body, and singing (from an understanding of the body). Learning music by doing is a great thing. But does it require notation?

   Some of my favourite memories of learning Orff was learning about teaching composition to young students. We had all sorts of tools: felt or magnetic bars for bar notation (in this case, not having a traditional staff or rhythms, just short and long bars with relative height), various other symbols such as fruit and worms, and stories...

    I loved the stories. I loved the creativity that came along with writing a piece by using a story. The first exercises were "I'm going to tell you a story, when we reach certain parts, we'll come up with special music for it. Otherwise, we'll use ostinatos in the background (ostinatos are a big core of Orff playing)." The group would start playing, and after a little while, the teacher would say "It was a dark and stormy night. What would be good music for a storm?" You'd get through the piece, a little bit at a time, till the whole thing was learned, and the students could perform it. No "appropriate" notation required. Eventually, you can turn it into more games, having students come up with the next part of the story and the music. 

    You can also use a nice step-wise progression of "long and short" heighted (where you can see a difference in pitch height, but no staff lines) to get into long and short on a staff that corresponds to their pentatonic scale (when they're young, you keep the kids on pentatonic. Easier that way, no "wrong notes). The students can move things around, write new pieces, while slowly learning all the notation. It's effective, and a lot of fun. 

   I remember coming up with a game for fourth graders based on a twelve tone matrix--but instead of a twelve tone idea, it was a game of rhythms and melodies, made up of only a 6x6 grid, and overlays that could change the rhythms. You could flip the board any which way, read melodies "upside-down and backwards" and all that. But it still wasn't "appropriate" music notation--but it got to a much more "difficult" bit of musical thinking; how composers developed ideas to create new but related ideas. Heady for fourth graders. But what they saw was a game that they could manipulate, where a student could choose a path (and oh, they started choosing crooked paths, and I found that fun as well!) and we'd sing through the ideas together, me at the piano plunking it out first, then everyone singing with the piano, then just singing. But, still...no notation...

   And the kids were singing, or they were playing. No reading involved. Of course, if any of those students wanted to go into band or orchestra, they'd definitely need to learn to read music. But not everyone wants to do that...

   I guess I'm awkwardly moving to a point. The goal is fantastic to have. But, how many hours do you really get these young students in a general music class room? It becomes a bit of "what is 'most' important in all these important things." What do we really want younger students to get out of a music education, that can make a lasting impression, and keep with them forever.

   My school was an "odd" duck, and I accept that. There weren't too many students who, at one time or another, were not in band or choir. Granted, most of the band kids left by middle school, but they had time to learn a bit of an instrument, basics of reading notation, participate in concerts, etc. With choir in middle school, many joined up that preferred singing to band, and in HS when band and choir started overlapping, there was attrition between the two--but a vast majority still participated in one or the other at some point. Did those that didn't participate dislike music?

   Oh hell no--many were even more into music, just not that kind of music. What then, thinking about education from K-12 in the US, is really the purpose of music, and where does notation fit into that? One of the things I've always found unfortunate is that after elementary school, music education falls away for many students--if you're not in a band or choir, there isn't a music class for you. The idea being "well, everyone can sing, so if they want to sing, they can do music." Well, yes, that's true, but, what about everything else in music?

    What about those bits about being discerning, knowing the history, knowing the great composers? Did we all get that really well in band? I mean, Beethoven didn't write a HS band piece, and while there may be some odd arrangement of his third symphony for HS band, it's not really the same as learning the piece, is it? What about the use of technology, recording, etc? And exploring how music is created, produced, and communicated? It's almost as if we're saying "Hey, by the time you're in middle school in America, it's time to get 'serious' about this STEM thing, keep up your English in as much as being able to communicate is important, and the arts and other humanities can start to fall away." 

   Let me be blunt: classical music in America is dying, slowly, of old age. The audiences aren't getting younger, and we're not drawing them in. The ones that are drawn to that music were the students that were in orchestra, band, and choir in HS, which I accept is, normally, not a large percentage of the school. And even then, most start to fall away from "classical" music quickly. And then how many from HS go onto some degree in music, and then they either stick with it or fall away after undergrad.

    But there's this other music that's around, ya know, everywhere. Popular music, dance music, indie bands with ukeleles and mandolins (or mandoguitars), dance music, heavy metal, rap, on and on and on. And, some of these musicians learned to read music, might have even been heavily classically trained, and use that to their advantage. They come up with entirely creative things...

   Then there are those that don't read any music, and only think "holy crap, this guitar chord sounds awesome, and so does this one! and I can move between them! Hey, where are those lyric sheets, I bet I can come up with a melody for this...oh man, this is baller." They can read some tab, maybe chord symbols, but not "traditional" notation. Or they sit in front of a computer, making music all day, and coming up with unique sounds...without any knowledge of the acousmatic genre, Denis Smalley, or Pierre Schaeffer. 

   And we listen. We all listen. Constantly. iPods and iPhones are everywhere, people in their own worlds with their own soundtracks. I'm the odd one, being a musician, sitting here with only the sound of my fans, and clicking of keys and being more than content in the lack of music. And yet we have this horde of listeners, of people consuming music in a way that was unfathomable even 25 years ago. And definitely not 90 some years ago when Orff and his colleagues were coming up with Orff Schulwerk, or by Orff's death in 1982. 

   I sit here wondering, without answers, if, maybe, music education needs to shift with the times. By middle school, music education is mostly about performance. By high school it definitely is. Is that a dated mentality--no longer is music only consumed by it's playing, by attending a concert and getting a single chance to hear a song. Records, magnetic tape, and radio started changing how most people interact with music. The walkman gave mobility to the masses, and freedom from the radio. And now, instead of having a bulky collection of tapes or CDs, thousands of songs are stored a device that travels with us everywhere, earbuds in, tuning out the world. Has classical music missed the boat, holding on desperately to outdated models?

   I don't think the music itself is old--I think my music has something to say to this time, not 100 years ago, and maybe only slightly to 100 years in the future. But I do think how we approach music in education may be holding on far too much to old practices.

    What is the answer? No idea. I would love for everyone to be able to read music, enjoy playing an instrument (any instrument!), and interact with music through performance at home. It's romantic, this idea of salon music, music happening communally instead of individually, and with a more personal attachment to the music making. But do we fight for that idea, actively, or do we just hold to traditions for the sake of holding to traditions? And would more people be engaged by classical music if it was approached another way?

   I don't know...But it's something I think about a lot...About my role, as a living composer of "contemporary concert music," as a musician on an "antiquated" instrument like a trombone, and as an audio engineer that sees kids consuming and using technology without understanding what's happening. I don't know if there are any answers, but I often ask "what can I do?"

 

   I have some ideas on that...one is I'm not sure if teaching all students to read formal "appropriate" notation is the answer to "what can I do?" Especially since not everything I write uses "appropriate" notation by the standards of classical music.

Ferneyhough and Me (part 2)

Many moons ago, I wrote a blog entry about Brian Ferneyhough. At that point, I had not met him. My thoughts came from various quotations from a rather old article/interview with Ferneyhough.

A few weeks ago, I got to meet Brian Ferneyhough. My first impression actually came through talking to a few of his students in attendance. We traded stories over some fabulous Korean food. Getting the "inside scoop" from his students was nice--I got to hear the good and the bad. And from two different types of students: one an ardent supporter; the other more disillusioned. Both agreed, however, that whether or not you buy into Ferneyhough's aesthetics or theories, that there's no denying he's brilliant.

I went into the masterclass a bit worried. What would I show him? I was assured that Ferneyhough actually didn't push his aesthetics onto composers, and worked from within the pieces. So, I thought I'd bring a piece that's a couple years old, but one dear to me that I honestly think is a pretty good piece--Dance of Disillusionment and Despair. Dance is a piece I've always enjoyed, and many others seemed to as well. However, I haven't been able to get it a life outside the 2 performances in 2011. I've been showing it in masterclasses, hoping to figure out what I can do to bring it along. John Corigliano really hated it.

Ferneyhough, however, didn't hate it. He did, however, dislike the contraints I put on the music. By choosing (arbitrarily) to make each movement 1 minute, he felt like I shortchanged the material. Almost every movement he would say: I like where this is going, you're starting to make something, then it ends.

At first he wasn't sure about the construction, with some movements having dense material, other movements being incredibly sparse (especially pitch-wise). When I told him the decision came from mapping measures in the first movement through the whole piece, he flipped through the whole piece, skipped to the beginning a few times, and said (paraphrased, of course. as was the earlier): Ah, ok. Fair enough. It appears you stuck pretty well to that. Sometimes, I don't like what happens, but it's a clear reason and you stick to it. Fair enough.

Finally, he came to the main points. And they were quite poignant. I had written a 17 minute piece...that was meant to be 35-45 minutes. I shortchanged my material in every movement. And, the endings...By making so many endings, I played out the possibilities.

Food for thought from Brian Ferneyhough: There are a million ways to begin a piece, but only a dozen or so ways to end one.

And when you have 13 endings, you're bound to have repeats.

What struck me about Ferneyhough was how romantically he talks about music. He quickly fell into the world of Dance, which is fairly Romantic. And then, during his talk, he referred to his own music in much the same way. Systems be damned, it was supposed to be musical, even Romantic. Ferneyhough seemed to use the different systems and construction methods just as a structuring device, a way to limit his own thought moving through his pieces.

When you look at a Ferneyhough score, "Romantic" isn't the first word that pops into your brain. When you hear some recordings, "mechanical" seems more like what should be heard.

I got to hear five pieces by Ferneyhough during June in Buffalo: Incipits, Exordium, Terrain, Mnemosyne, and Intermedio alla Ciaccona. This festival was the first time I've ever gotten to hear any of Ferneyhough's music live. And it was a treat. I'll even forgive JACK Quartet for changing their program and playing Exordium instead of String Quartet No. 2, even though SQ No. 2 is one of my favourite pieces of all time.

It's a great mix. Terrain and Intermedio had Irvine Arditti as the soloist, Terrain with Ensemble Signal. Terrain was handled masterfully by Talea Ensemble, JACK took on Exordium, and Mnemosyne was performed by Keiko Murakami (I believe) of Ensemble Linea (I can't find my program, but she's listed as the regularly flutist with Ensemble Linea).

Everyone played passionately. This doesn't mean they missed notes--they were all inscrutably perfect. But there was music in every note. Every awkward leap, every crunchy harmony, all the subdivisions within subdivisions moving at different time ratios, every nuance had meaning. Watching Arditti play Terrain and Intermedio was astounding. There was no break, no phrase that wasn't carefully attended to. JACK playing Exordium was masterful, with Arditti watching from the audience (and clapping quite enthusiastically when I stole a look in his direction).

This all leads me to one major thought: Ferneyhough, while writing in a method that some would call "dense," is still trying to reach people. He still wants an audience to get a reaction from the piece, to be drawn into that world. In the masterclass, the way he talked about my piece was more about how I failed to do exactly that. And hearing his music live, I was drawn into the music, the drama, the entire experience. During his pieces, I found myself moving closer to the edge of my seat, listening with full attention. If I didn't have full attention, I'd miss a single detail, and the following sequence may be rendered meaningless.

Ferneyhough creates experiences. Let go of the preconception, of the "i don't understand." Stop trying to understand and just listen, be a part of the music. Maybe, eventually, you can listen and "understand" but that's not really the point. He's giving you all the information, and, just like in a certain author's books, you don't have to READ the whole page, just relax, and skim, and the information will "magically" come to the surface. Ferneyhough is like that.

And what I learned from him is I'm not there yet.