Verbum Sap

Back in 2001, I recorded an album entitled Verbum Sap that I shelved for reasons that I won’t get into just yet. I’m excited to announce that I’m finally mixing it for release, with a planned drop date of February 7, 2012.

I won’t say much about it now except that the driving instrumentation is primarily classical guitar-oriented, and it has a distinct intimate and emotional vibe that distinguishes it from my other albums. More about all that later.

 Chemical Bath

I’m also currently writing and recording a 5-song EP for a band called Chemical Bath that I have formed with my sister, Ambria Nicole. She and I are sharing singing duties, and I’m producing.

Chemical Bath are (left to right): Ambria Nicole and Dan Wallace

For now, we’re calling the genre Indie Electropop. I don’t like the word “indie,” but it seems be the closest genre label in terms of getting across what we’re doing for marketing and PR purposes, which is what such labels exist for. This is underscored by the fact that no two “authoritative” websites seem to agree on what genre a given current artist belongs under.

Otherwise, what would be the genre name for how I think of and describe us?: 

Melodic, song-oriented, synth-based pop-rock with varying levels of musical and lyrical simplicity and complexity, often with an edgy left-field influence and occasional moments of wispily ethereal beauty. And you can dance to it; well, most of it.

We’re planning on releasing the EP in January or February of 2012.

Other Projects

I’m slowly writing a new solo album that I’ll probably start recording in the fall of 2012. I’ve also got material written for another album that I’ll record after that one.

I’m also going to school with the intention of pursuing a PhD in philosophy. My interest is in the ethical implications of metaphysical inquiry. For example, the answer – or, most importantly, lack of a satisfactory answer – to the metaphysical question, “What is the meaning of life?”, has an essential relationship with the ethical question, “How should I live?”. I am passionately interested in the relationship between these sorts of questions and the propositions they inspire.

I am also interested in aesthetics, jurisprudence, social concerns, cognitive science, et al., though I can’t help but feel that the values that contextualize our approach to dealing with those areas are derived from conclusions that are metaphysical and ethical in nature.

There’s the update! So, what can I write about entertainment or (pop) culture-wise?

Entertainment and (Pop) Culture

I recently finished up watching Battlestar Galactica. I really enjoyed it. Serial drama TV storytelling is tough because unlike with novels and movie scripts, once the first draft is written of a TV series, you can’t go back and clean it up. This is one of the reasons they have such a hard time producing endings that don’t piss off half the fans. Most great shows suffer from this dilemma, and BSG is no exception, though I was satisfied with how it ended (unlike A.V. Club’s Chris Dahlen, though I sympathize with many of his complaints). Still, BSG is an insightful, smartly written, well-acted show that covers a surprisingly wide breadth of philosophical and resonantly human ground.

Also, I’m no expert, but I’d wager that Dr. Gaius Baltar is the one male character in contemporary American television with more active tear ducts than Dr. Jack Shephard from Lost. Seriously, though, James Callis was fantastic as Baltar throughout BSG’s run.

Speaking of series finales, my favorite is one of Joss Whedon’s: Angel‘s “Not Fade Away.” Another Whedon finale runs a very close second: “Objects in Space” from Firefly. Jubal Early’s final words win best closing line of a series seen by me (a small group, admittedly).

Most recent sitcom I got into: The IT Crowd. The first episode didn’t really draw me in, but I followed the advice of reviewers and went on to the second episode, which hooked me. It’s a very funny show.

That’s the last TV I’ll be watching for a while. I have movies and, especially, documentaries and video lectures to catch up on. Browsing the documentaries at Netflix, I see there is no dearth of entries centered on Adolph Hitler. Is there any other 20th century figure with whom we in the West are more obsessed? We certainly seem to be obsessed with his resurrection, or at least with finding his replacement.

I’ve often heard that Barack Obama is Hitler, though that’s slowed down. At any rate, I no longer see the “Obama = Hitler” sandwich board guy hanging out at my train stop; maybe he’s conserving energy for 2012.  In case there’s any question, I do not believe that Obama is remotely ideologically - or othwerise – hitlerian.

It’s interesting to consider the extent to which we are still living in the wake of WWII, though. For instance, the relationship between post-WWII consumerism and pop culture is the same relationship that exists between those things today, and, interestingly, ironic cultural sensibilities about consumerism have strengthened that relationship as opposed to having weakened it.

That’s it for now. More soon… -Dan

Back in October, Marnie Stern’s dense guitar, frenetic energy, and songcraft grabbed my attention. While sounding of her time, she also sounded unique and fresh. I made a mental note of her, but didn’t investigate further until coming across a recent article by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker (Jan 3, 2011). The article introduces Stern as a virtuosic guitarist, and groups her with indie rock contemporaries Annie Clark (nom de plectre, St. Vincent) and Marissa Paternoster (of the band Screaming Females), who are also invariably lauded for their guitar prowess whenever mentioned by the press.

This movement of female guitar badasses is really interesting to me. Though it might seem prima facie to be largely the construction of the media, it really does appear that, at least in the world of mainstream indie rock music, most of the guitarists pushing at the customary boundaries of the instrument are girls (the article points out that boys are more concerned with their samplers). My favorite guitarist working today is probably Shannon Wright, come to think of it.

Marnie Stern herself, though, is always quick to point out that she doesn’t see herself as a great guitar player. She opts for her technique of choice – finger tapping – because it’s “easy” thanks to using two hands instead of one on the fret board. Here’s a video of Stern talking about it. If you don’t watch it, note that she also points out that, despite not considering herself a great guitar player (though she does, in another video, refer to one of her tapping riffs as a “shred,” an idiosyncratic use of the word, perhaps naively so), people on the internet are very mean in their attacks on her playing.

So, what’s with the discrepancy between the media who revere Stern and the online public who tears her apart?

Finger tapping, the most focused upon feature of her playing, is broadly associated with 1980s rock guitar icon Eddie Van Halen, though Stern, who’s self-taught, has said that she got it from Ian Williams of the band Don Caballero (and I once read an interview with Eddie, who is also self-taught, in which he said that he got it from trying to duplicate what jazz fusion uber-virtuoso Alan Holdsworth was doing with his left hand alone). Lots of guitarists used the technique in the ‘80s, however, and some of them developed it well beyond Eddie’s approach. Check out Jennifer Batten’s 8-finger performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”; it’s quite the feat (she was Michael Jackson’s guitarist for a spell, by the way, which meant Jackson got a fantastic live rendition of Eddie’s solo for the song “Beat It”):

Stanley Jordon, another guitarist who came up in the ’80s, took tapping even further, playing bass lines and chords with the left hand while simultaneously playing melodies or improvising solos with the right. But he’s a jazz player. This is an important distinction. Most people expect jazz players to be capable of playing virtuosically, at least since music critics warmed to bebop. The same is not only expected, but demanded of classical musicians, at the very least of the soloists. And flamenco guitarists… a flamenco guitarist who can’t shred isn’t a flamenco guitarist.

Marnie Stern is an indie rock guitarist, which comes with its own technical expectations. As is Annie Clark (a.k.a St. Vincent). But Clark, though often referred to as a guitar genius, shredder, virtuoso and the like, doesn’t play with techniques or effects that would be typically be associated with virtuosity. She therefore doesn’t seem like she’s trying to be a shredder, and as a result will be largely ignored by the shredder community (I spent some time searching and couldn’t find the sort of guitar-centric vitriol you find for Stern). Stern, on the other hand, does play fast, and she does it with tapping, a technique associated with virtuosity. But, in pure shred guitar terms, what she’s doing isn’t nearly as difficult, ambitious, fast, or cleanly executed as what the best rock guitarists were doing in the ‘80s, nor what many of their (generally perfunctory) successors are doing today.

So, despite the fact that she’s an “indie rock guitarist,” Stern’s utilizing a virtuoso technique, getting media attention for it, and using that attention to her commercial advantage, which firmly puts her into the guitar player scrutiny ‘gator tank. One of the first criterion young guitarists look at when determining if someone is any good is whether they can reasonably say, “I could play that.” Most guitarists who aspire to shredder status would consider themselves to be able to play what Stern is playing, even though most of them would have a hard time imitating what she does. Getting through the entirety of such songs as “This American Life” and “Precious Metal” (from 2007′s In Advance of the Broken Arm) would take quite a bit of practice due to the stamina and accuracy that her idiosyncratic (especially phrasing-wise) self-taught style requires (especially considering that to really be true to the challenges she has set for herself, the parts should be played while singing). Still, ambitious guitarists figure that, with practice, they could play the guitar parts without too much trouble.

(As for her opponents who, even with practice, know they couldn’t play those parts… well, these types of guitarists consider even most of the people better than them to suck. They might say, in long impassioned message board debates, that Jimi Hendrix or Steve Vai suck due to not meeting some arbitrary technical or aesthetic criterion such as, “To be a good guitarist, you have to be able to uniformly pick every note with your balls.” Such haters don’t deserve more mention than this parenthetical blurb.)

Therefore, I can say with confidence that Marnie Stern is a badass musician in her own right, at the very least for the way her intricately weaved tapping riffs are part of a greater musical structure that includes the juxtaposition of vocal melody, harmonic environment, and fret board movement (it’s generally unfair to reduce a musician to a single instrumental technique, even if that musician focuses on that technique as a marketing hook; we shouldn’t conflate “musician” and “marketer”). Her music is fantastic, I love her playing, and I’m happy she’s made the scene.

That said, I’d like to dig a little deeper into our cultural conceptions of the guitar without venturing too far from the context of girl badasses. These regions may be more dimly lit than the above, so bear with me as I attempt to separate and identify the obfuscated shapes and forms dwelling there.

By employing her techniques primarily on distorted electric guitar (as opposed to acoustic guitar, as guitar wiz Kaki King does),Stern has landed on the radar screens of shredders from all walks of life: heavy metal, metal prog, jazz, fusion, neoclassical fusion, etc., despite the fact that what Stern claims to really want more than anything is to play guitar in the way that best facilities the realization of her musical vision. These other genres and subgenres continue to encourage virtuosic technique, but mainstream pop and rock music abandoned the virtuosic guitar solo when Nirvana came onto the scene. Kurt Cobain soloed, but his solos served other purposes than that of the shredders. Virtuosic rock guitar solos became quickly stigmatized in the early 1990s (Billy Corgan, however, played shredder guitar solos on the early Smashing Pumpkins stuff, but less so as time went on, and certainly not on any of their hits).

In the last several years, however, I have noticed an increasing appetite for virtuosic rock guitar playing. You can find loads of young shredders of varying skill levels on YouTube, most of whom are playing along with the same stuff I did in the ‘80s because, having gone out of style, there’s not much interesting music to choose from that’s new to the field. Even the former metal shredders who are still around have taken to holding back (compare solo Marty Friedman in the ‘80s to his solo output in the ‘00s). Media and audience praise for Stern’s playing exemplifies this renewed appetite, though, to be clear, it’s coming from people who also expect to hear their idea of a good song.

I myself get mostly positive response to my guitar solos, though there has been some anger as well. On the other hand, no one has ever objected to my playing fast, complicated music on a classical guitar. This difference in reaction is in line with our cultural conceptions of musicianship in general: it’s perfectly fine to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” on violin or classical guitar, it’s revered as high art and craft in fact. Play it on a distorted electric guitar, however, and suddenly we have an affront to taste, a soulless exercise. We praise the classical and jazz (the “purer” the better) virtuosi, and denigrate the same in rock music because of what it supposedly stands for (to be clear, in non-cultural, simple musical/sonic terms, playing a piece on one instrument rather than another is in large part merely a change in timbre; interestingly, the change from violin to electric guitar is smaller than going from violin to classical guitar, because the former two are closer in timbre). As a result, many electric guitarists who aspire to virtuosity have developed the sort of defense mechanism we see in action when people are tearing Stern apart.

These haters are, on some level, reacting to the fact that they themselves have been demonized for that which they do better than Stern, but for which Stern is being praised (Rhapsody music service describes her as the “candy-coated Yngwie Malmsteen of freak rock,” which is way off the mark any way you look at it, and doesn’t help anybody). There is certainly going to be some resentment for the likes of Stern on the part of accomplished guitarists who have not managed to have a career. It’s unfortunate, but there is an incredible amount of bitterness among many guitarists who spent years of their lives practicing eight hours a day only to be dismissed by the public as being cheesy showoffs. Their therapy is to congregate at message boards and talk shit about people who are famous. And you don’t have to be an accomplished player to join in, you just have to be a fan of the sentiment (see above parenthetical blurb). It’s not healthy. People with thriving careers don’t do this.

What the haters aren’t getting, though, is that Stern’s musical sensibility is essentially a marriage of the dirty philosophy of melodic post-punk with the technical approach of prog and metal, and that’s something the sensibility of the current (recently mainstreamed) indie rock media is going to respond to (a great example of this marriage is the song “Nothing Left” from her 2010 album, Marnie Stern). Her instrumental technique gives those journalists something new to think and write about in their field, but they wouldn’t care about it at all if they didn’t relate to the music that came out of it. Personally, I like that she’s touted by the media as a virtuoso because it might help open some doors for my own music and playing.

Before closing, I want to comment on the other guitarist mentioned in the New Yorker article, Marissa Paternoster. She shreds in an essentially blues-based rock style, and does it quite well. There has for some time been a debate amongst factions of (mostly narrow-minded) rock guitarists about the merits of such a style (famous examples of such players are Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Slash, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughn, John Frusciante, Angus Young, Eric Johnson, and Orianthi Panagaris) vs. a more modal or technically honed rock style that also draws from blues, but more predominantly takes from jazz and/or classical music. Examples of this second type, to name a small few, are Randy Rhoads, Frank Zappa, Jennifer Batten, Jason Becker, Vinnie Vincent, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and, of course, Yngwie Malmsteen. (NB: I’m loosely categorizing some of these for the sake of making a point, not as an attempt to make some hard bifurcation of rock guitardom.)

“Tasteful” and “feel(ing)” are the words that gets bandied about the most in arguments over which of the above approaches is best, though I think it’s a pointless argument, the real purpose of which is to support tastes that are too elusive to concretize. I prefer defending my taste (if forced to) with the famous old Duke Ellington tautology because of how it underscores the aforementioned elusiveness: if it sounds good to me, it’s good. At any rate, Paternoster might be put down by the latter faction but supported by the former, though overall she will be considered a good soloist by most fans of rock guitar. I know I dig her.

I’ll leave you with another excellent musician (and songwriter), whom I referred to earlier as my favorite guitarist working today, Shannon Wright. I’ll let the music speak for itself:

I’m a big fan of the often engaging and thought-provoking WNYC radio show podcast Radiolab. However, as the generally science-oriented subject matter tends to deal with things with which I have little personal experience, it’s hard for me to judge the soundness of the content. The loaded language of the presenters (“the results were… startling”) along with the constant use of cosmic sound design often gives the impression that the show’s creators are at least as interested in blowing the listener’s mind as they are in educating and informing (to be fair, the show’s sound designer, Jad Abumrad, has expressed concern for going too far, and has demonstrated at least one segment before and after having added music and sound effects).

There is one episode, “Musical Language”( 9/24/07), the informational soundness of which I am better able to judge. The episode is a good one, and I would endorse listening to it as an overview of, or introduction to, some of the material covered, but there was one glaring issue in the program that bothered me to the point of feeling the need to write about it.

In one of the segments (dealing with the correlation between the tonal aspects of the Chinese language and the attribute of perfect pitch in Chinese music students), perfect pitch is characterized by Abumrad as follows:

“If you look in your music history textbooks, you will see that every famous composer, like the really big ones, they all had it. So, if you have perfect pitch, on some level you are closer to them. You’ve got the gift.”

(Not true; read on…)

The second half of the next segment in the same episode deals with the riot that occurred during the 1913 premiere of Vaslav Nijinksy and Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring. Stravinsky is referred to as being considered “one of the most important composers of the 20th century, if not the most important.” It is certainly true that Stravinsky is one of the most important (or relevant or influential or however one might put it) composers of the 20th century, and he would be listed as such in any music history textbook of at least the last 50 years. What is not mentioned in the segment is that he did not have perfect pitch (in fact, I remember reading that he had the worst ear in his class when studying under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsokov).

This apparent oversight bothers me for three reasons: First, it would be reasonable to deduce from the information provided in the episode that Stravinsky had perfect pitch. Second, and more importantly, this is not just an oversight on the part of the journalists who put the segments together. Abumrad, co-creator/host of the show, is a classically trained composer. He knows better. Finally, there is a mythic conception about perfect pitch that contributes to an ongoing and dangerous elitism in classical music as seen by outsiders and which is perpetuated by insiders. This elitism (of which ideas such as that of perfect pitch, too often portrayed as a practically superhuman attribute, is one of a handful of constitutive factors) has played a big part in the demise of classical music as a viable feature of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Perfect (a.k.a. “absolute”) pitch is loosely defined as the ability to recognize and produce musical pitches without the aid of a reference point. It’s not really that big of a deal to have it. At any conservatory or university music program there are bound to be at least a few people with perfect pitch, but everybody knows that this ability in and of itself does not translate into outstanding musical talent, or even that it is obvious that it contributes to musical talent.

While it is true that many famous (and non-famous) musicians have had perfect pitch, it is not clear that all of those reported to have perfect pitch actually had it. You will find conflicting information about J.S. Bach (assumed, not confirmed), Frederic Chopin (probably not), Leonard Bernstein (most likely did not), Claude Debussy (presumed to by many, but not confirmed), and Gustav Mahler (who seems to have had it as a child but not as an adult). Joseph Haydn did not have it, nor did many other famous composers I don’t have time to list here. There are also degrees of perfect pitch, such as the ability to recognize single pitches, but getting confused when trying to separate clusters of notes in an especially high or low registers of the piano; being able to recognize only a single pitch (such as a violinist recognizing ‘g’); not being able to recognize quarter or eighth steps or microtones in general; being able to recognize but not produce pitches; not being able to do it at all on days when you’re very tired. Just look at it this way: some people are better at distinguishing degrees of color and color content, and some people are better at distinguishing pitch content. It’s not known where most famous composers would have landed in this regard because it’s just not that important.

Getting back to Radiolab, Stravinsky definitely did not have perfect pitch. In the same segment, Stravinsky’s dissonant music is compared to the consonance of Richard Wagner’s, whose work is given as an example of “the great Romanticism of 19th century music.” They don’t mention that Wagner didn’t have perfect pitch either. Also, Wagner had plenty of dissonance in his time. In fact, I’d like to speculate here a bit about the correlation between the development of increasingly dissonant 20th century music and the lack of perfect pitch in those responsible. Wagner introduced a harmonic idiom (such as with his famous Tristan/Isolde chords) that would influence those who would construct the basis of the most complex harmonic theory to date; among them: Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg (not confirmed to have perfect pitch), and Stravinsky. In fact, it was implied in the Radiolab episode that one of the chords in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was the most dissonant ever heard.

Could it be that a lack of perfect pitch leads to increased musical freedom? That it perhaps enables the composer to go to places that would sound wrong, possibly even revolting, to a composer with perfect pitch? Wait… no, Ludwig van Beethoven (who might have had perfect pitch) went pretty far out there for his time with the dissonant harmonic complexity. Especially once he was practically deaf, that is (perhaps that’s the logical conclusion to what I’m suggesting with the whole not-being-constrained-by-ears thing; keep in mind that, with imagined dissonance, the inner-ear doesn’t experience the physical clashing that occurs in the material dissonance of the real world, which could influence a deaf composer to compose more dissonantly).

But then there’s Charles Ives, the father of American style harmonic dissonance, and whose music was much more dissonant than that which was being developed in Europe at the time (Ives was unaware of those composers, in fact, and they of him). He supposedly did have perfect pitch, but his musical case is an interesting and unique one. He was trained by his father to do things such as play a song in two keys at once (he was also formally trained at Yale, but his father’s impression came first, chronologically and philosophically; so maybe Charles’ father, George Ives, is the real father of American dissonance…). This wasn’t purposeful atonality (lack of a key), this was two instances of diatonically proportioned music happening concurrently. His father wanted him to “stretch” his ears. Later, though, Ives would experiment with all sorts of complex harmonic structures with an aesthetic ideology that was more based on representing the constantly clashing sounds of the “real world” (including off-key singing) in his music than any kind of purely musical theory, and which included dissonance for its own pleasurable sake.

I’ve been reading a lot about Ives lately and will stop here before I get carried away writing about him.

And let’s not get started on John Cage, either, another very famous and important textbook composer of the 20th century who not only didn’t have perfect pitch, but it could be easily argued he would not have been the important composer he was had he had the “gift.”

The upshot is that Radiolab must be taken as an entertaining way to be introduced to complex subject matter, and that perfect pitch is a tool which, depending on one’s perspective, may or may not be a benefit or liability to musicians and music in general, but is most likely irrelevant either way in the grand scheme of musical innovation and progress.

In the meanwhile, browse the site and buy some music and/or write a review at one of these online stores (or search wherever you like to discover new music):

NOTE: I did not make a country album called From the Heart Feel Me; that’s another Dan Wallace. Maybe I should have used a stage name… suggestions?

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Varèse: The Liberation of Sound
From Perspectives on New Music
New Instruments and New Music

Edgard Varèse, 1936

When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive it, taking the place of the linear counterpoint, the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived. When these sound-masses collide the phenomena of penetration or repulsion will seem to occur. Certain transmutations taking place on certain planes will seem to be projected onto other planes, moving at different speeds and at different angles. There will no longer be the old conception of melody or interplay of melodies. The entire work will be a melodic totality. The entire work will flow as a river flows.

Today with the technical means that exist and are easily adaptable, the differentiation of the various masses and different planes as these beams of sound, could be made discernible to the listener by means of certain acoustical arrangements. Moreover, such an acoustical arrangement would permit the delimitation of what I call Zones of Intensities. These zones would be differentiated by various timbres or colors and different loudnesses. Through such a physical process these zones would appear of different colors and of different magnitude in different perspectives for our perception. The role of color or timbre would be completely changed from being incidental, anecdotal, sensual or picturesque, it would become an agent of delineation like the different colors on a map separating different areas, and an integral part of form. These zones would be felt as isolated, and the hitherto unobtainable non-blending (or at least the sensation of non-blending) would become possible.

In the moving masses you would be conscious of their transmutations when they pass over different layers, when they penetrate certain opacities, or are dilated in certain rarefactions. Moreover, the new musical apparatus I envisage, able to emit sounds of any number of frequencies, will extend the limits of the lowest and highest registers, hence new organizations of the vertical resultants: chords, their arrangements, their spacings, that is, their oxygenation. Not only will the harmonic possibilities of the overtones be revealed in all their splendor but the use of certain interferences created by the partials will represent an appreciable contribution. The never before thought of use of the inferior resultants and of the differential and additional sounds may also be expected. An entirely new magic of sound!

I am sure that the time will come when the composer, after he has graphically realized his score, will see this score automatically put on a machine which will faithfully transmit the musical content to the listener. As frequencies and new rhythms will have to be indicated on the score, our actual notation will be inadequate. The new notation will probably be seismographic. And here it is curious to note that at the beginning of two eras, the Mediaeval primitive and our own primitive era (for we are at a new primitive stage in music today) we are faced with an identical problem: the problem of finding graphic symbols for the transposition of the composer’s thought into sound. At a distance of more than a thousand years we have this analogy: our still primitive electrical instruments find it necessary to abandon staff notation and to use a kind of seismographic writing much like the early ideographic writing originally used for the voice before the development of staff notation. Formerly the curves of the musical line indicated the melodic fluctuations of the voice, today the machine-instrument requires precise design indications.

Music as an Art-science

And here are the advantages I anticipate from such a machine: liberation from the arbitrary, paralyzing tempered system; the possibility of obtaining any number of cycles or if still desired, subdivisions of the octave, consequently the formation of any desired scale; unsuspected range in low and high registers; new harmonic splendors obtainable from the use of sub-harmonic combinations now impossible; the possibility of obtaining any differentiation of timbre, of sound-combinations; new dynamics far beyond the present human-powered orchestra; a sense of sound-projection in space by means of the emission of sound in any part or in many parts of the hall as may be required by the score; cross rhythms unrelated to each other, treated simultaneously, or to use the old word, “contrapuntally” (since the machine would be able to beat any number of desired notes, any subdivision of them, omission or fraction of them) – all these in a given unit of measure or time which is humanly impossible to attain.

Rhythm, Form and Content

My fight for the liberation of sound and for my right to make music with any sound and all sounds has sometimes been construed as a desire to disparage and even to discard the great music of the past. But that is where my roots are. No matter how original, how different a composer may seem, he has only grafted a little bit of himself on the old plant. But this he should be allowed to do without being accused of wanting to kill the plant. He only wants to produce a new flower. It does not matter if at first it seems to some people more like a cactus than a rose. Many of the old masters are my intimate friends – all are respected colleagues. None of them are dead saints – in fact none of them are dead – and the rules they made for themselves are not sacrosanct and are not everlasting laws. Listening to music by Perotin, Machaut, Monteverdi, Bach, or Beethoven we are conscious of living substances; they are “alive in the present.” But music written in the manner of another century is the result of culture and, desirable and comfortable as culture may be, an artist should not lie down in it. The best bit of criticism André Gide ever wrote was this confession, which must have been wrung from him by self-torture: “When I read Rimbaud or the Sixth Song of Maldoror, I am ashamed of my own works and everything that is only the result of culture.”

Because for so many years I crusaded for new instruments with what may have seemed fanatical zeal, I have been accused of desiring nothing less than the destruction of all musical instruments and even of all performers. This is, to say the least, an exaggeration. Our new liberating medium – the electronic – is not meant to replace the old musical instruments which composers, including myself, will continue to use. Electronics is an additive, not a destructive factor in the art and science of music. It is because new instruments have been constantly added to the old ones that Western music has such a rich and varied patrimony.

Grateful as we must be for the new medium, we should not expect miracles from machines. The machine can give out only what we put into it. The musical principles remain the same whether a composer writes for orchestra or tape. Rhythm and Form are still his most important problems and the two elements in much most generally misunderstood.

Rhythm is too often confused with metrics. Cadence or the regular succession of beats and accents has little to do with the rhythm of a composition. Rhythm is the element in music that gives life to the work and holds it together. It is the element of stability, the generator of form. In my own works, for instance, rhythm derives from the simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at calculated, but not regular time lapses. This corresponds more nearly to the definition of rhythm in physics and philosophy as “a succession of alternate and opposite or correlative states.”

As for form, Busoni once wrote: “is it not singular to demand of a composer originality in all things and to forbid it as regards form? No wonder that if he is original he is accused of formlessness.”

The misunderstanding has come from thinking of form as a point of departure, a pattern to be followed, a mold to be filled. Form is a result – the result of a process. Each of my works discovers its own form, I could never have fitted them into any of the historical containers. If you want to fill a rigid box of a definite shape, you must have something to put into it that is the same shape and size or that is elastic or soft enough to be made to fit in. But if you try to force into it something of a different shape and harder substance, even if its volume and size are the same, it will break the box. My music cannot be made to fit into any of the traditional music boxes.

Conceiving musical form as a resultant – the result of a process, I was struck what seems to me an analogy between the formation of my compositions and the phenomenon of crystallization. Let me quote the crystallographic description given me by Nathaniel Arbiter, professor of mineralogy at Columbia University:

“The crystal is characterized by both a definite external forma in a definite internal structure. The internal structure is based on the unit of crystal which is the smallest grouping of the atoms that has the order and composition of the substance. The extension of the unit into space forms the whole crystal. But in spite of the relatively limited variety of internal structures, the external forms of crystals are limitless.”

Then Mr. Arbiter added in his own words: “Crystal form itself is a resultant (the very word I have always used in reference to musical form) rather than a primary attribute. Crystal form is the consequence of the interaction of attractive and repulsive forces and the ordered packing of the atom.”

This, I believe, suggests better than any explanation I could give about the way my works are formed. There is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, directions, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces. The form of the work is the consequence of this interaction. Possible musical forms are as limitless as the exterior forms of crystals.

Connected with this contentious subject of form in music is the really futile question of the difference between form and content. There is no difference. Form and content are one. Take away form, and there is no content, and if there is no content there is only a rearrangement of musical patterns, but no form. Some people go so far as to suppose that the content of what is called program music is the subject described. This subject is only the ostensible motive I have spoken of, which in program music the composer chooses to reveal. The content is still only music. The same senseless bickering goes on over style and content in poetry. We could very well transfer to the question of music what Samuel Beckett has said of Proust: “For Proust the quality of language is more important than any system of ethics or esthetics. Indeed he makes no attempt to dissociate form from content. The one is the concretion of the other – the revelation of a world.” To reveal a new world is the function of creation in all the arts, but the act of creation defies analysis. A composer knows about as little as anyone else about where the substance of his work comes from.

As an epigraph to his book, Busoni uses this verse from a poem by the Danish poet, Oelenschläger:

“What seek you? Say! And what do you expect?
I know not what; the Unknown I would have!
What’s known to me is endless; I would go
Beyond the known: The last word still is wanting.”
And so it is for any artist.

The Electronic Medium

First of all I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: “the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound,” as proposed by Hoëne Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feeling, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium. Although this new music is being gradually accepted, there are still people who, while admitting that it is “interesting,” say, “but is it music?” It is a question I am only too familiar with. Until quite recently I used to hear it so often in regard to my own works, that, as far back as the twenties, I decided to call my music “organized sound” and myself, not a musician, but “a worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities.” Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn’t like.

Our new medium has brought to composers almost endless possibilities of expression, and opened up for them the whole mysterious world of sound. For instance, I have always felt the need of a kind of continuous flowing curve that instruments could not give me. That is why I used sirens in several of my works. Today such effects are easily obtainable by electronic means. In this connection it is curious to note that it is this lack of flow that seems to disturb Eastern musicians in our Western music. To their ears it does not glide, sounds jerky, composed of edges of intervals and holes and, as an Indian pupil of mine expressed it, “jumping like a bird from branch to branch.” To them apparently our Western music seems to sound much as it sounds to us when a record is played backward. But playing a Hindu record of a melodic vocalization backward, I found that it had the same smooth flow as when played normally, scarcely altered at all.

The electronic medium is also adding an unbelievable variety of new timbres to our musical store, but most important of all, it has freed music from the tempered system, which has prevented music from keeping pace with the other arts and with science. Composers are now able, as never before, to satisfy the dictates of that inner ear of the imagination. They are also lucky so far in not being hampered by esthetic codification – at least not yet! But I am afraid it will not be long before some musical mortician begins embalming electronic music in rules.

We should also remember that no machine is a wizard, as we are beginning to think, and we must not expect our electronic devices to compose for us. Good music and bad music will be composed by electronic means, just as good and bad music have been composed for instruments. The computing machine is a marvelous invention and seems almost superhuman. But, in reality, it is as limited as the mind of the individual who feeds it material. Like the computer, the machines we use for making music can only give back what we put into them. But, considering the fact that our electronic devices were never meant for making music, but for the sole purpose of measuring and analyzing sound, it is remarkable that what has already been achieved as musically valid. They are still somewhat unwieldy and time-consuming and not entirely satisfactory as an art-medium. But this new art is still in its infancy, and I hope and firmly believe, now that composers and physicists are at least working together, and music is again linked with science, as it was in the Middle Ages, that new and more musically efficient devices will be invented.

In the Jean-Luc Godard movie Weekend, there’s a scene in which a character is playing piano (Mozart, I believe), and at one point he says something to the effective of, “Modern classical music is the biggest practical joke to be played on the public in the history of Western art.” Something like that. Anyway, I wonder if Godard, a pretentious modernist of sorts in his own right, had read Babbitt’s article; I bet he had. Finally, I’ll end this over-long preface by pointing out that if read from the right angle, this article is funny, like a lampoon of a mid-20th century modernist manifesto:

“Who Cares if You Listen?”

Milton Babbitt, High Fidelity (Feb. 1958)

This article might have been entitled “The Composer as Specialist” or, alternatively, and perhaps less contentiously, “The Composer as Anachronism.” For I am concerned with stating an attitude towards the indisputable facts of the status and condition of the composer of what we will, for the moment, designate as “serious,” “advanced,” contemporary music. This composer expends an enormous amount of time and energy- and, usually, considerable money- on the creation of a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value. e is, in essence, a “vanity” composer. The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in his music. he majority of performers shun it and resent it. Consequently, the music is little performed, and then primarily at poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow ‘professionals’. t best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists.

Towards this condition of musical and societal “isolation,” a variety of attitudes has been expressed, usually with the purpose of assigning blame, often to the music itself, occasionally to critics or performers, and very occasionally to the public. But to assign blame is to imply that this isolation is unnecessary and undesirable. t is my contention that, on the contrary, this condition is not only inevitable, but potentially advantageous for the composer and his music. From my point of view, the composer would do well to consider means of realizing, consolidating, and extending the advantages.

The unprecedented divergence between contemporary serious music and its listeners, on the one hand, and traditional music and its following, on the other, is not accidental and- most probably- not transitory. Rather, it is a result of a half-century of revolution in musical thought, a revolution whose nature and consequences can be compared only with, and in many respects are closely analogous to, those of the mid-nineteenth-century evolution in theoretical physics The immediate and profound effect has been the necessity of the informed musician to reexamine and probe the very foundations of his art. He has been obliged to recognize the possibility, and actuality, of alternatives to what were once regarded as musical absolutes. He lives no longer in a unitary musical universe of “common practice,” but in a variety of universes of diverse practice.

This fall from musical innocence is, understandably, as disquieting to some as it is challenging to others, but in any event the process is irreversible; and the music that reflects the full impact of this revolution is, in many significant respects, a truly “new” music, apart from the often highly sophisticated and complex constructive methods of any one composition or group of compositions, the very minimal properties characterizing this body of music are the sources of its “difficulty,” “unintelligibility,” and- isolation. In indicating the most general of these properties, I shall make reference to no specific works, since I wish to avoid the independent issue of evaluation. The reader is at liberty to supply his own instances; if he cannot (and, granted the condition under discussion, this is a very real possibility) let him be assured that such music does exist.

First. This music employs a tonal vocabulary which is more “efficient” than that of the music of the past, or its derivatives. This is not necessarily a virtue in itself, but it does make possible a greatly increased number or pitch simultaneities, successions, and relationships. This increase in efficiency necessarily reduces the “redundancy” of the language, and as a result the intelligible communication of the work demands increased accuracy from the transmitter (the performer) and activity from the receiver (the listener). Incidentally, it is this circumstance, among many others, that has created the need for purely electronic media of “performance.” More importantly for us, it makes ever heavier demands upon the training of the listener’s perceptual capacities.

Second. Along with this increase of meaningful pitch materials, the number of functions associated with each component of the musical event also has been multiplied. In the simplest possible terms. Each such “atomic” event is located in a five-dimensional musical space determined by pitch-class, register, dynamic, duration, and timbre. These five components not only together define the single event, but, in the course of a work, the successive values of each component create an individually coherent structure, frequently in parallel with the corresponding structures created by each of the other components. Inability to perceive and remember precisely the values of any of these components results in a dislocation of the event in the work’s musical space, an alternation of its relation to a other events in the work, and-thus-a falsification of the composition’s total structure. For example, an incorrectly performed or perceived dynamic value results in destruction of the work’s dynamic pattern, but also in false identification of other components of the event (of which this dynamic value is a part) with corresponding components of other events so creating incorrect pitch, registral, timbral, and durational associations. It is this high degree of “determinancy” that most strikingly differentiates such music from, for example, a popular song. A popular song is only very partially determined, since it would appear to retain its germane characteristics under considerable alteration of register, rhythmic texture, dynamics, harmonic structure, timbre, and other qualities.

The preliminary differentiation of musical categories by means of this reasonable and usable criterion of “degree of determinacy” offends those who take it to be a definition of qualitative categories, which-of course-it need not always be. Curiously, their demurrers usually take the familiar form of some such “democratic” counterdefinition as: “There is no such thing as ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music.” There is only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music.” As a public service, let me offer those who still patiently await the revelation of the criteria of Absolute Good an alternative criterion which possesses, at least, the virtue of immediate and irrefutable applicability: “There is no such thing as ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music. There is only music whose title begins with the letter ‘X,’ and music whose title does not.”

Third, musical compositions of the kind under discussion possess a high degree of contextuality and autonomy. That is, the structural characteristics of a given work are less representative of a general class of characteristics than they are unique to the individual work itself. Particularly, principles of relatedness, upon which depends immediate coherence of continuity, are more likely to evolve in the course of the work than to be derived from generalized assumptions. Here again greater and new demands are made upon the perceptual and conceptual abilities of the listener.

Fourth, and finally. Although in many fundamental respects this music is “new,” it often also represents a vast extension of the methods of other musics, derived from a considered and extensive knowledge of their dynamic principles. For, concomitant with the “revolution in music,” perhaps even an integral aspect thereof, has been the development of analytical theory, concerned with the systematic formulation of such principles to the end of greater efficiency, economy, and understanding. Compositions so rooted necessarily ask comparable knowledge and experience from the listener. Like all communication, this music presupposes a suitably equipped receptor. am aware that “tradition” has it that the lay listener, by virtue of some undefined, transcendental faculty, always is able to arrive at a musical judgment absolute in its wisdom if not always permanent in its validity. I regret my inability to accord this declaration of faith the respect due its advanced age.

Deviation from this tradition is bound to dismiss the contemporary music of which I have been talking into “isolation.” Nor do I see how or why the situation should be otherwise. Why should the layman be other than bored and puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music or anything else? It is only the translation of this boredom and puzzlement into resentment and denunciation that seems to me indefensible. After all, the public does have its own music, its ubiquitous music: music to eat by, to read by, to dance by, and to be impressed by. Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity? The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music, to the extent that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been even less extensive than his background in other fields. But to this, a double standard is invoked, with the words music is music,” implying also that “music is just music.” Why not, then, equate the activities of the radio repairman with those of the theoretical physicist, on the basis of the dictum that “physics is physics.” It is not difficult to find statements like the following, from the New York Times of September 8, 1 957: “The scientific level of the conference is so high… that there are in the world only 120 mathematicians specializing in the field who could contribute.” Specialized music on the other hand, far from signifying “height” of musical level, has been charged with “decadence,” even as evidence of an insidious “conspiracy.”

It often has been remarked that only in politics and the “arts” does the layman regard himself as an expert, with the right to have his opinion heard. In the realm of politics he knows that this right, in the form of a vote, is guaranteed by fiat. Comparably, in the realm of public music, the concertgoer is secure in the knowledge that the amenities of concert going protect his firmly stated “I didn’t like it” from further scrutiny. Imagine, if you can, a layman chancing upon a lecture on “Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms.” At the conclusion, he announces: “I didn’t like it,” Social conventions being what they are in such circles, someone might dare inquire: “Why not?” Under duress, our layman discloses precise reasons for his failure to enjoy himself; he found the hall chilly, the lecturer’s voice unpleasant, and he was suffering the digestive aftermath of a poor dinner. His interlocutor understandably disqualifies these reasons as irrelevant to the content and value of the lecture, and the development of mathematics is left undisturbed. If the concertgoer is at all versed in the ways of musical lifesmanship, he also will offer reasons for his “I didn’t like it” – in the form of assertions that the work in question is “inexpressive,” “undramatic,” “lacking in poetry,” etc., etc., tapping that store of vacuous equivalents hallowed by time for: “I don’t like it, and I cannot or will not state why.” The concertgoer’s critical authority is established beyond the possibility of further inquiry. Certainly he is not responsible for the circumstance that musical discourse is a never-never land of semantic confusion, the last resting place of all those verbal and formal fallacies, those hoary dualisms that have been banished from rational discourse Perhaps he has read, in a widely consulted and respected book on the history of music, the following: “to call him (Tchaikovsky) the ‘modern Russian Beethoven’ is footless, Beethoven being patently neither modern nor Russian…” Or, the following, by an eminent “nonanalytic” philosopher: “The music of Lourie’ is an ontological music… It is born in the singular roots of being, the nearest possible juncture of the soul and the spirit…” How unexceptionable the verbal peccadilloes of the average concertgoer appear beside these masterful models. Or, perhaps, in search of “real” authority, he has acquired his critical vocabulary from the pronouncements of officially “eminent” composers, whose eminence, in turn, is founded largely upon just such assertions as the concertgoer has learned to regurgitate. This cycle is of slight moment in a world where circularity is one of the norms of criticism. Composers (and performers), wittingly or unwittingly assuming the character of “talented children” and “inspired idiots” generally ascribed to them, are singularly adept at the conversion of personal tastes into general principles. Music they do not like is “not music,” composers whose music they do not like are “not composers

In search of what to think and how to say it, the layman may turn to newspapers and magazines. Here he finds conclusive evidence for the proposition that “music is music.” The science editor of such publications contents himself with straightforward reporting, usually news of the “factual” sciences; books and articles not intended for popular consumption are not reviewed. Whatever the reason, such matters are left to professional journals. The music critic admits no comparable differentiation. We may feel, with some justice, that music which presents itself in the market place of the concert hall automatically offers itself to public approval or disapproval. We may feel, again with some justice, that to omit the expected criticism of the “advanced” work would be to do the composer an injustice in his assumed quest for, if nothing else, public notice and “professional recognition.” The critic, at least to this extent, is himself a victim of the leveling of categories.

Here, then, are some of the factors determining the climate of the public world of music. Perhaps we should not have overlooked those pockets of “power” where prizes, awards, and commissions are dispensed, where music is adjudged guilty, not only without the right to be confronted by its accuser, but without the right to be confronted by the accusations. Or those well-meaning souls who exhort the public “just to listen to more contemporary music,” apparently on the theory that familiarity breeds passive acceptance. Or those, often the same well-meaning souls, who remind the composer of his “obligation to the public,” while the public’s obligation to the composer is fulfilled, manifestly, by mere physical presence in the concert hall or before loudspeaker or- more authoritatively- by committing to memory the numbers of phonograph and amplifier models. Or the intricate social world within this musical world where the salon becomes bazaar, and music itself becomes an ingredient of verbal canapés for cocktail conversation.

I say all this not to present a picture of a virtuous music in a sinful world, but to point up the problems of a special music in an alien and inapposite world. And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism

But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival or the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist. It is only proper that the university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers with their professional training and general education, should provide a home for the “complex,” “difficult,” and “problematical” in music. Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly, I take consolation in the knowledge that in this respect, too, music seems to be in historically retarded parallel with now sacrosanct fields of endeavor. In E. T. Bell’s Men of Mathematics, we read: “In the eighteenth century the universities were not the principal centers of research in Europe. hey might have become such sooner than they did but for the classical tradition and its understandable hostility to science. Mathematics was close enough to antiquity to be respectable, but physics, being more recent, was suspect. Further, a mathematician in a university of the time would have been expected to put much of his effort on elementary teaching; his research, if any, would have been an unprofitable luxury…” A simple substitution of “musical composition” for “research,” of “academic” for “classical,” of “music” for “physics,” and of “composer” for “mathematician,” provides a strikingly accurate picture of the current situation. And as long as the confusion I have described continues to exist, how can the university and its community assume other than that the composer welcomes and courts public competition with the historically certified products of the past, and the commercially certified products of the present?

Perhaps for the same reason, the various institutes of advanced research and the large majority of foundations have disregarded this music’s need for means of survival. I do not wish to appear to obscure the obvious differences between musical composition and scholarly research, although it can be contended that these differences are no more fundamental than the differences among the various fields of study. I do question whether these differences, by their nature, justify the denial to music’s development of assistance granted these other fields. Immediate “practical” applicability (which may be said to have its musical analogue in “immediate extensibility of a compositional technique”) is certainly not a necessary condition for the support of scientific research. And if it be contended that such research is so supported because in the past it has yielded eventual applications, one can counter with, for example, the music of Anton Webern, which during the composer’s lifetime was regarded (to the very limited extent that it was regarded at all) as the ultimate in hermetic, specialized, and idiosyncratic composition; today, some dozen years after the composer’s death, his complete works have been recorded by a major record company, primarily- I suspect- as a result of the enormous influence this music has had on the postwar, nonpopular, musical world. I doubt that scientific research is any more secure against predictions of ultimate significance than is musical composition. Finally, if it be contended that research, even in its least “practical” phases, contributes to the sum of knowledge in the particular realm, what possibly can contribute more to our knowledge of music than a genuinely original composition?

Granting to music the position accorded other arts and sciences promises the sole substantial means of survival for the music I have been describing. Admittedly, if this music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected, the concert-going activity of the conspicuous consumer of musical culture will be little disturbed. But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live.