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Though David Robert Jones, the boy from Brixton, is no longer with us, David Bowie, the artist, through his music, films, plays, paintings, and explorations of gender, sexuality, religion, love, fear, and death, remains.

The post David Bowie: Everything has changed, he changed everything appeared first on OUPblog.

I’ve been very struck over the past couple of days listening to the testimony of so many musicians who worked with Pierre Boulez. They all seem to say the same thing. He had a phenomenal understanding of the music (his own and that of others), he had an extraordinary ear, and he was a joy to work with because he gave so much.

The post In memoriam: Pierre Boulez appeared first on OUPblog.

By Meg Wilhoite

In December I blogged about composers whose works challenge listeners to reconsider which combinations of sounds qualify as music and which do not. Interestingly, The Atlantic recently ran an article relating the details of a study that tested how much of our perception of what is “music” – in this case, pleasant, consonant music – is learned (and thus not innate). For me (and perhaps for you) there is nothing too surprising about this — there are far too many types of music in this world of ours for the perception of consonance (or, what is pleasing in music) to be innate — but it serves as a fine backdrop for what I’m about to write.

For if a penchant for consonance is not innate, then our individual definitions of music have the capability for modification and expansion. I remember the first time I heard music that challenged my ears (a piece by Anton Webern); at first I recoiled, but after a few days, when I realized the experience was sticking with me, I decided to take a second listen. Over time, I grew to appreciate and enjoy the sound of it, partly because I began to embrace the idea that music can consist of music that isn’t diatonic, and also because I began to understand Webern’s compositional methods and historical context.

Part of this new appreciation was learning more about the music, and, as a music-theorist-by-night, I thought it might be fun to take a closer analytical look at compositions written by two of the composers mentioned in my last post, just to take a closer look at what makes them tick.

Let’s start with Elliott Carter’s piece 90+ for solo piano (you can watch an excellent performance by Illya Filshtinskiy on YouTube).

For me, the salient feature of this piece is its texture, of which I hear two types. In the first, chords sustain while single notes, some of them accented (marked with the “greater than” sign in the score below), are struck at irregular intervals, as in the first six measures of the piece.

Excerpts from 90+ used with permission from Boosey & Hawkes.

In the second, the sustained chords are absent; instead single notes (for the most part), sometimes accented, skitter about all over the keyboard.

Excerpts from 90+ used with permission from Boosey & Hawkes

So much for my first-glance hearing, what does the composer have to say?

“90+ for piano is built around ninety short, accented notes…against these the context changes character…it was composed in March of 1994 to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of my dear and much admired friend, Goffredo Petrassi…”

And thus you can see, on the first page of the score near the top of this post, little numbers in parentheses — which I’ve circled — that begin counting out Petrassi’s ninety years (the little numbers only occur on the first and last pages, the last page beginning with number 85). This knowledge changes my hearing of the piece: Carter is expressing through music ninety years of a man’s life. Though his pitch and rhythmic selections still remain arcane to me at this point, the overall gesture of the piece takes on new meaning.

My second analysis involves a new piece by composer Matthew Hough (one of NPR’s “100 composers under 40”) called “Remembered States” (2011), written for nine performers. Even more so than the Carter piece, texture is by far the most prominent feature of this work, mainly due to the unconventional use of the instruments.

Excerpt from Remembered States used with permission from Hough House (ASCAP)

The piece features tactile clacking, gritty overtones, and various shimmering sounds. In this excerpt, the voice murmurs unintelligible words while the flute and trumpet follow suit “as if speaking”; the composer has called this technique “ghost playing”, a sort of shadow of the music. The clicking of the sax keys is audible, as well as the bassoon’s overtones and the coordinated chords in the piano and electric guitar. High above it all is a dry, stratospheric sustained violin note.

For me the experience is that of blurriness or semi-consciousness, where the overall effect is a sort of pixilated background out of which certain sounds stand out in stark contrast (particularly the bassoon overtones and the violin note). According to the composer, the title of the piece is meant to convey a type of remembering, where details sometimes dissipate in the background, while others jump dramatically to the fore.

While pieces like these can be challenging for some listeners, I think it is unfair to assume, as some have done, that the composers are unconcerned with connecting with their audience. I believe for many avant-garde composers today it’s more of an unconcern about conforming to perceived norms. The audience is welcome to come along for the ride if they so wish.

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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The post Follow-up: Is it music? A closer look appeared first on OUPblog.

By Meghann Wilhoite

2012 has been a poignant year for avant-garde music. German composer Hans Werner Henze passed away in October at age 86; a little over a week later American composer Elliott Carter passed away at the age of 103. The late John Cage was, as Musical America put it, “feted beyond his own wildest dreams” this year in celebration of his birth centenary.

All three of these composers wrote music that challenged listeners to reconsider the boundaries of what qualifies as music.

John Cage once stated, “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, ‘You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.’ So I said, ‘I’ll beat my head against that wall.’”

Elliott Carter (touchingly eulogized by Paul Griffiths last month on the OUPblog) likewise acknowledged that most listeners did not understand his music: “One thing I can’t understand is why people have such trouble with modern music. It seems to me to be perfectly intelligible. When I hear one of my pieces again, or listen to the record, I don’t see why people could find this perplexing in any way. Yet audiences can’t make head or tail of it… I finally said the hell with that whole point of view and decided to write what I really always hoped to write, and what I thought was most important for me. I’ve taken that point of view ever since.”

Hans Werner Henze, according to Norman Lebrecht, knew that his music would not be fully understood or appreciated during his lifetime.

What is it about these composers’ music that “perplexes” people so, and yet holds their attention? What makes Howard Stern, listening to a young composer’s piece exclaim “We couldn’t even figure out if it was music” and then spend ten minutes of his show excoriating it?

I personally have long been fascinated by this type of music — highly structured, arcane music that challenges my ears, requiring deep listening, still managing somehow to stimulate my emotions. Really this music is why I studied music theory throughout my graduate years; I wanted to be able to talk about what I was hearing in a meaningful way.

My journey began with Morton Feldman’s music, but after I moved to New York City I quickly became involved with the thriving and vibrant community of avant-garde musicians that live here.

Last July I interviewed two composers about the progression of their compositional styles over their heretofore relatively short careers. One of the interviewees, Matthew Hough (who wrote the piece featured on Stern’s show), seemed to subconsciously channel Carter when he said “At a certain point [in my career] I realized I was thinking too much about how I was being perceived and not thinking hard enough about why I’m doing what I’m doing and what composition means for me.”

And here we get to the crux of the matter: Is it music when someone approaches composition in this way? Is it music when what we hear defies classification? Indeed, I use the term avant-garde here, but one of the challenges of talking about this music is terminology: What do we talk about when we can’t talk about chords, melodies, themes, etc.?

Ultimately, my answer to the first two questions is ‘yes’; my answer to the last question is ‘get creative’. Above all, open-mindedness and a willingness to listen actively and creatively are absolutely necessary if we’re going to appreciate avant-garde music on its own terms.

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” –John Cage.

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Is it music? A listener’s journey appeared first on OUPblog.