I am starting this random collection of observations and comments from the musical world I partake of on March 12, 2007. Having just returned from the massive SEAMUS 2007 Conference in Ames, Iowa, I have much to say, but writing it all down in the form of a review may take more time than I have to spend at this moment. So I'll dispense my comments in drips and drabs.
SEAMUS ("Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States") is the granddaddy of all electronic music festivals. There were 14 concerts in 3 days, including six on the final day, going from 9:30 AM until after 10 PM. A total of 88 works were played. There were also 12 papers and one sound installation (which was more interesting than some of the works). It was an orgy of electro-acoustic music. You hear so much; there is little time to reflect. Things go by so fast that you can't process it before another one starts. With all this stimulation, you are bound to miss some of it even when it was happening right in front of you.
One observation I have to make is that the juxtaposition of works sometimes does one or more of them harm. You wind up comparing works by different composers that originated for different reasons and interests, rather than taking in each piece on its own merit. This festival seemed to have many similar works on the same program. For example, one concert presented Pasaje del Sonido I by Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Inner Nature Persistently Emerges by William Kleinsasser, and Alter Ego (Homage a Hrothgar) by James Mobberley. All of these works are virtuosic pieces that pit a live player against computer-processed sounds played by the same instrument. Another concert presented several works based pretty much on noises: Fixed Explosions by Samuel Pluta, Fluctuation by Hee Yun Kim, Meditation on Violence by Schuyler Tsuda (in spite of the title, the accent was more on the meditation than the violence), and Autobahn (program note: “It’s gonna be loud”). The latter work involved not just recorded sounds of cars screeching by, motor noises and such, but had live percussionists banging on a muffler and a huge tractor tire among other things. Another concert presented, in succession, SLAMMED for saxophone and computer-processed sounds by James Paul Sain, and Les Flutes de Pan: Hommage à Debussy for flute and recorded flute sounds by Larry Austin. Both works were similar in the same way of the first three mentioned above. I can see how some reviewers come away from such events thinking that, well, of that group one of the pieces was better than the others, but it really does none of them any good. I don’t mean to criticize the organizers, because concert schedules have to be arranged so that performers can fit them into their schedules, and they also have to happen in specific venues. But we should try to avoid these comparisons. I wish I could hear some of these works again in different contexts.
There were several videos presented on the festival (“music videos” I guess you could say, although they bear no resemblance to the ones on MTV), and some composers are clearly developing sophisticated techniques to create images and coordinate them with music in much the same way that they compose music. Some works in this vein were excellent, with beautiful images, colors, and composition, but some also illustrate the problems of an art in its infancy. Several of them involved images that were annoyingly out of focus. I can see how such a quality may be useful in blending images and in creating a surrealistic landscape, but to go on for too long is unsettling. It is also a problem when the music and images are poorly coordinated, especially when one of the portions ends much before the other. Finally, all the videos seem to spend a great deal of time on the title and credits. One was only about 3 minutes in length, but the title remained on screen over half a minute, which was a huge percentage of the duration. All this was heightened by one work that had trouble getting started and kept the title image on screen for about a minute and a half.
Lots of works had catchy titles: Termites by Cort Lippe (aka Convolution Brother #1), Spiked by Glenn Hackbarth (not to be confused with Slammed, mentioned above), Anger Stone by Jon Christopher Nelson, Meditation on Violence mentioned above. But the award for best title of this festival surely must go to Lulled by an Imploding Lotus by Jack W. Stamps!
Another complaint of mine which I believe I have had from about every such festival I have attended are those pieces which are so screechingly loud as to do potential damage to our eardrums. It is not for nothing that some people bring ear plugs to these events. This happened several times in this festival, and not always in the places where you might imagine it from reading the titles and program notes. (As I mentioned above, Meditation on Violence was more of a meditation, and even Autobahn wasn’t as loud as some of the other works on that program.) It is not just the electroacoustic pieces that were guilty of that problem, for some instrumental works were also pushing the limits. (On a festival like this, all the instruments are miked and fed into the loudspeakers, although sometimes the places the sounds emanate from adds another dimension to the experience.) Several times I looked down at the mixing console and saw the composer deliberately turning up the level. This is all annoying enough, but what I want to comment on here is not so much the composers’ attempts desperately to make us listen to their music as it is the fact that, it seems to me, this is almost always an effort to cover up the overall weakness of the musical conception. The music is not interesting enough in its own right. So you take a bad idea and, perhaps in an effort to make it more poignant, force the listener to pay attention to it. On me at least, this almost always has the opposite effect. I come away not just unimpressed, but angry.
I spent last week attending the Sonorities 2007 Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and I will post a complete review of this festival to my web site soon.
The chance to hear music from all over the place, but more from Europe than anywhere else, has given me some new insights into the differences between the European and American musical scenes. There are some things you know but have to experience on a daily basis to feel the impact, such as the fact that there are fewer commercial radio stations in Europe, and you are not surrounded by a cacophony of worthless background drivel, except mainly in the bars. They are raucous and smoky (at the end of this month, a smoking ban will supposedly go into effect). People go to bars and restaurants in groups, and they are loud and boisterous.
There is lots of live music, and the greater funding availability for the arts creates a pleasant cultural environment. Performers can make a living specializing in more than traditional music. There have been lots of ordinary citizens attending the concerts, although the bulk is mostly students and some of the visiting composers, although here many of those have only attended their own concerts and left the next day.
The reception of avant-garde music here is not much different from the US, however. That type of music thrives a bit more in Europe because everything does. In the US, it is nearly impossible to survive without engaging the interest of some broader group of people. In Europe, promoters don’t have to engage the public. If the arts were funded like they are in the US, much of this music would just disappear.
The students from the University of Manchester in England made a good impression with the two concerts of their Kairos improvisational ensemble. Almost all the works the ensemble played were improvisations, with a couple of exceptions. They used up to four computers to do real-time processing of mostly instrumental sounds, although in one work the group’s director provided some rich source materials using only pieces of paper and plastic wrap and one small hard plastic object, which he banged against a music stand. The paper was wrinkled, crumpled and torn, and the plastic wrap rubbed over various things. All the processing produced rich transformations that included filtering, reverberation, spatialization (in that space, of course!) And other things. But all of these works had various common characteristics, such as a slow tempo and long sounds with slow and subtle changes.
Before these concerts, a couple of pieces by composers Tullis Rennie and Diana Simpson had also impressed me. After hearing the ensemble, it made me wonder about my previous enthusiasm for these works. I wouldn’t go too far with this view, but all these works shared the same "house style." That style certainly has much to recommend it, but when you get the feeling that the music comes out in a particular way just because that’s the way they do it there, it loses some of its luster. Simpson’s work at least was motivated by some strong abstract ideas about machines taking over the world, and everything in her piece could be traced back to that idea. This may go to show that a grand conception can transcend any limitations imposed by the group mindset.
One of the good things about the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast is that there is no "house style." This is an anomaly in Europe, where many institutions produce a lot of music that all shares the same perspective, although it must be said that England is rather different from the continent. The students at the School of Music and Sonic Arts (I know of no other school with such a name) is that they are open to a greater diversity of music than many places. There was music from many places around the world – Central and South America (Brazil, Chile, Mexico), Hong Kong, Beijing, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and lots from the UK and the USA. An interesting thing is that many countries were represented by students, while the US was represented by seasoned professionals, including some of our most outstanding composers, like Andrew May and William Kleinsasser. It’s no wonder that the music made a good impression.
|
Hubert Howe Aaron Copland School of Music Queens College Flushing, NY 11367 Tel: (718) 997-3865 (997-FUNK) e-mail: hubert.howe@qc.cuny.edu |