Author: allencole
Date: 2004-10-21 17:36
Okay, Markus, your last post won't require so much study.
>on and on, they came up with own fingerings for multiphonics, or wanted >to play everything in an instabile-pitched, very breathy and noise-enriched >way
I would like to know what age these pupils were, and whether studying privately or in a classroom. Opening minds to possibilities is one thing. But rejecting commonly used musical frameworks as antiquated and stifling is no way to bring up a young musician, whose career (or hobby) generally depends on manipulating and mastering those same frameworks.
What you describe would seem to give real credence to the guy who banged his stick on the floor and said "I'm a musician, too." I had some experiences of this type in college, led by a professor who was a student of Schoenberg's. What I found in her world of post-tonality was an artist so internalized that she produced only the shoddiest grade of work--including one of the most inept and childish rock bands in history. Even the lyrics were woefully inept. Internally, she viewed all of this as high satire.
Since she studied with Schoenberg, I would have to question her very concept of freedom--although I do understand her inability to make good use of it. After all, I can't think of a more confining medium than the 12-tone thing. I can remember being praised by another professor of Schoenberg lineage for a serial clarinet quartet that I had written by rolling dice to select both the tone row and the note values--all while watching a rerun of Gomer Pyle, USMC. While that feat did cause me some internal amusement and self-congratulation, I would hardly present it to the public as anything more than the parlor game it is. After all, I didn't create the piece. The DICE did.
>I am sorry if my writing irritate You or cause You to see funny colours, I >won´t change it just for the sake of smoothness and so-called 'better >understanding', which most often is just another term for simplification.
This is certainly your option, but I do think that it reflects the kind of mindset that's most often involved with what you're advocating. This is why I think that future scholars will look at the 20th Century and be more fascinated by the 32-bar song than they will with most of its post-tonal works.
>I love to think of a stageless concert, where I was adressed by an >acquaintance, casually, and he went on talking to me although I went on >playing what I had on my musicstand, until his wife say "Shut up, they´re >playing already!"...wonderful
I'm living your dream, then. Every time I play dinner music (which I quite enjoy) for a low-key gathering of some sort. It's great to know that the most droll combo gigs become high art via the vocalizations of audience members who ask me questions while the horn's in my mouth, or ask for business cards while I'm playing a note that requires eight of my fingers. Perhaps I should reach for a card next time, and invent a new multiphonic fingering in the process.
>This "Stop it, I can´t find anything here, what is this supposed to >mean?!" -phenomenon I found in pupils often, the more violent the more >they were suffering the locked-in-syndrome by tonality and all that goes >along with it - but I tried to make them hop onto this 'inner continuous >stream' that You object so much, literally to try to surf it, control it, just go >along with it for the beginning, and in the end nearly all of them would do >nothing else
That's what I'm afraid of. By rejecting commonly accepted structure, there is probably nothing else that they CAN do. We can only stand back and tell them that it was good for us if it was good for them, and compliment the Emperor on his new clothes. For most musicians, falling on your face is part of the learning process. I am definitely troubled at the prospect of removing the floor and walls that the students would fall against. If the floor is gone, you're eventually going to fall a lot farther.
While I clearly do not prefer either the music or the philosophy that you advocate, Markus, I'm not saying that it doesn't have a place. But I do see it as both useless and potentiall harmful to developing musicians who have not yet mastered accepted frameworks for making music. Free improv, noise, and simliar pursuits seem to me like a separate branch on the tree of musical evolution--much like the chimpanzee branches off from the line of human evolution.
Take that chimp, give it a laptop loaded with Finale or Sibelius, and I'm sure that we'll get some very free music produced. If he can't work the software, he can bang the laptop percussively against the ground, or maybe sit and think about it for 4 minutes and 32 seconds. (thus re-enacting the evolution of post-tonality?)
Personally, I think that we're in an era of post-post-tonality.
Allen Cole
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