Thursday, June 7, 2007

Musical Codes

The space in which one looks or examines (the gaze) is philosophically very different from the space in which one sees. The space in which we see is always a represented space. Composers often think that audiences will or should be in the same space they inhabit. The pure gaze is inseparable from the existence of an autonomous artistic field. Access to works of art cannot be defined solely in terms of physical accessibility, since works of art exist with the presence of those who have the means of understanding them.

Comprehension involves a decoding operation, which in itself is a form of cultural capital. The role of the educational system is important in this respect for establishing the ability to decipher and derive meaning from the codes.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

The Atlanta New Music Scene

I recall a comment made in 1998 by a prominent San Francisco attorney who had just joined the board of directors for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players after having served as chairman of the board for the SF Opera for many years. I asked him the reason behind his decision to now focus his philanthropic efforts toward new music. He said, “It is because of my concern for this city and the quality of life it provides. Having a healthy creative arts community, I have discovered, is vital for a city’s self-understanding of its social fabric and is often a catalyst for its social improvement. San Francisco will never truly be a great American city if it does not support an active community of creative artists and thinkers.”

I would like to bring up a few issues surrounding the question of why, with so many talented composers, a new music scene in Atlanta has not been able to coalesce. It is relevant to remember how composers have historically functioned in Western societies and how that is different in post-modern America. The use of the term “composer” and its assumptions may be creating some confusion regarding expectations and success. The career title of composer in the West generally evolved out of service to theological institutions and aristocratic patrons associated with monarchies in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. These groups provided the historical foundations for the fairly robust support of contemporary music now found in most major European cities. Similarly the American cities that developed from extensive European immigration during the 18th - 20th centuries have the oldest support of classical music in the country and also possess some of the most active new music scenes (New York, Boston, Chicago, etc).

One of the consequences of an American democratic, representative government and the constitutional separation of church and state is that the principal sources of patronage for music found in Europe do not flourish particularly well here. As a result, American artistic support developed around new sources: individual contributions and private foundations, and colleges and universities. This is a very different model from that in Europe, although they are increasingly adopting the American system as their public funds decrease. It is no accident that there is a high concentration of major research universities and conservatories in US cities where there is an active new music scene, i.e. Columbia, NYC, Yale, and Juilliard in New York; Harvard, NEC, Boston Conservatory, Boston College, Berklee, and Brandeis in Boston; Northwestern, University of Chicago, and Univ. of Illinois in Chicago; and other examples.

There are several major Atlanta universities with strong and developing music programs that employ full-time composers (Emory, Ga Tech, GSU, Kennesaw State, Clayton State, and others). Their ability to attract creative thinkers from other parts of the country (faculty and students) and provide a local resource for the development of Atlanta-based composers and artists is a significant factor for the growth of new music in the area.

The American pioneer spirit and sense of adventure and discovery that drove the creation of many California cities has also produced supportive environments there for innovative creation in the arts. Research universities have also played significant roles there as well, i.e. Stanford and UC-Berkeley in San Francisco; and UCLA, USC, and Cal Arts in Los Angeles. Many of these California new music communities have focused more on innovative technological applications for music given the high concentration of research and development labs and industries in the area.

Because of differences in our country from Europe, being a “composer” is not necessarily limited to the art and liturgical traditions and the term is often applied to anyone who creates and designs sound. This can include, but not limited to, numerous forms of media (film, TV, websites, video games), advertising and commercial applications, and entertainment and popular music. There may be significant differences in the goals and approaches of composers who create hip-hop, orchestral repertoire, jazz, commercial jingles, experimental computer music, and interactive video games. In most cases, they are called and may refer to themselves all as composers. It should be no surprise that the communities developing around their work are equally as diverse.

So, given this historical preface, what does this tell us about the current situation for composition and creative thought in Atlanta? Atlanta has many thriving cultural and musical communities. There are a substantial number of successful industries in the area with large numbers of employees involved in media research and innovation. The colleges and universities offer a diversity of musical opportunities for study and participation.

We should also not overlook the importance of the dynamic musical presence of Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra programs. His work with the ASO promoting new compositions is critical to the continued growth of the entire musical community. As a comparison, one can observe the dramatic shift that has taken place in the quality and quantity of new music being performed and created in San Francisco and L.A. since Michael Tilson Thomas and Eka-Pekka Salonen became conductors in those cities.

Atlanta has many of the necessary ingredients for a thriving new music scene all ready in place. A robust new music scene often develops from a delicate balance of support from major artistic institutions, research universities, area residents involved in creative and exploratory work, and private and industry philanthropists who believe in the value of this activity. If any one of these participants is not present, the work of creative artists in Atlanta will remain somewhat hidden or ghettoized.

The increasing number of collaborations now taking place among those in the musical institutions, universities, and creative industries in the city is encouraging. It is also positive that there is a sense of inclusiveness towards those with creative interests. If enough small communities of new music and compositional activity begin to grow and flourish, at some point they will collectively merge and be perceived as a healthy Atlanta new music scene, one hopefully reflecting our unique history and culture identity and contributing to our social progress and understanding and to Atlanta's national reputation as a vibrant, creative, and socially-conscious city.

Where is Beauty?

In the 18th century, the philosophical conception of aesthetics was almost entirely dominated by the idea of beauty. Other than the sublime, the beautiful was the only aesthetic quality actively considered by most artists and thinkers. However, during the 20th century, beauty, with its simplistic, commercial implications, almost entirely disappeared from artistic reality, as if attractiveness somehow became the diabolus in musica. Aesthetics, which some thought had become too narrowly identified with beauty, was replaced in critical discourse by formalistic descriptions.

As a young composer in the 1970s, I understood that working with sounds and textures recognized as “beautiful” was a controversial course to pursue. Things began to change somewhat in the 1980s; attractiveness once again became an accepted option in musical creation.

From the onset of 20th century modernism, it was clear that something can be art without being beautiful, but a new positive interpretation of beauty was required if it was to be embraced by the composer-intellectual. This reemergence of beauty in the musical language of composers often was a result of compositional approaches drawn from non-Western, non-canonic and vernacular repertories, or from a new emphasis on spectral transformations of sound.

Recently, the Emory University Center for Humanistic Inquiry and the Institute of Liberal Arts sponsored Harvard aesthetics professor Elaine Scarry as a distinguished visiting professor. In discussing her book, On Beauty and Being Just, Scarry argued that beauty has a positive moral value—that it actually intensifies our desire to correct injustice wherever we find it. It may, as Scarry asserts, “inspire people the aspiration to political, social and economic equality.” The placement of aesthetic values in relation to other values may be one of many factors that contributed to this reconsideration of beauty.

In my method of composing, each work begins as contemplation on a set of questions or concerns, often centered on qualities of sound, relationship of the body to new technologies in performance, or culturally hybrid forms. This design process is perhaps no different than that of individuals working in architecture, engineering or computer science. Problems of organization must be addressed at the quantitative level, considering new aspects of temporality (vertical, static, cyclical, expanding), new sonic progressions and new performer-instrument relationships.

But on another level are the unconscious preferences: the imaging of dreams, memories and reveries; representations of stillness; sensuous and ambiguous textures; darkness unfolding into light—in essence, my personal tastes. It is the dance of these two processes that constitutes my creative method. Each takes its turn leading, but the dance would not be possible without both.

Many other contemporary composers freely choose the questions, issues and aesthetic concerns they wish to explore. The “theories” they devise may be seen as forms of action, forms of thought, or forms of art or beauty.

Does the compositional method require a more multilingual understanding by both composer and listener today? Is the modern composer a sort of scientist, conducting research into social and cognitive behavior and the limits of aesthetic experience? And, as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and others have suggested, do artists and intellectuals in general have a social responsibility? Increasingly for composers, the answers seem to be ‘yes.’

Observing the evolution of Western musical thought over the past two centuries, the boundaries between art and the rest of human experience have diminished substantially. Perhaps in these patterns of sound, which we call music, there is much more to be learned about each other and ourselves in the future.

Composers

Ever since my earliest attempts at composing, I’ve had a growing suspicion that this activity, which essentially involves constructing patterns of sound, is far more complicated and intriguing than I initially understood.

As a conductor and musical performer in Atlanta, I realize the importance of understanding how musical thought becomes physically expressed, how it’s perceived by listeners, how it acquires cultural value. And, in order to answer these ontological questions about music (thus helping me develop as a composer), I realized the necessity of analyzing both sound and the contexts in which it is produced in modern society.

This, in turn, quickly led to questions of philosophical aesthetics, representations of culture and hybridity, mimesis, instrumentality, the body, temporality, cognition, commodification, and even, ultimately, theology.

The act of music composition in highly technological and culturally diverse societies requires a new literacy of sonic and social phenomena. For me, the process is essentially a humanistic endeavor. Indeed, this inquiry-driven role for Western composers dates back to the mid-1800s.

Before that time, musical compositions in the West were often celebratory: to praise God, to congratulate the city council or court patrons, to recognize important liturgical events. That purpose changed slightly for the 19th century composer, whose aim also involved evoking a wide array of emotional and psychological states. By the 20th century, the purpose of composers became to think—to provide a philosophical basis of thought and human action, with vague analogues in sound.

Richard Wagner is perhaps the earliest example of this emerging genre of modern composer-intellectual. He commented on topics as diverse as the origins of classical Greek drama in folk art, early Christian asceticism, alliteration in German verse, and dreaming in the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Wagner became an intellectual at large, confrontational and often erudite, whose public persona was much larger than that of a musician focused on local performance conditions.

As the century wore on, composer-intellectuals took a much stronger interest in politics and social criticism. These individuals usually were not directly involved in political action but rather attempted to effect change through illustrating technical possibilities in their work. The 20th century, modernist composer devised theories and structures that themselves become forms of action, as well as forms of art. As music became self-conscious—intricate, cerebral—the composer became engaged with a range of intellectual activity; musical compositions became models for problem-solving, as if music itself were a type of thinking.

Many such composers emphasized the social and cultural aspects of musical practice. Listening to music for its own sake—disinterested contemplation in a quiet concert hall, for example—became only one of the uses for music. This practice eventually led to the present, in which an acute understanding of how our own physical, neurological and cultural makeup shape musical practice. Today, music plays an important role in how we come to terms with the world, in negotiating the realities of our environment and relationships, and in forming cultural and personal identities.