The Loose Filter Project

Golijov introduces his works

Osvaldo Golijov discusses his works - nifty resource from WQXR. It's not the most in-depth stuff, but it's still nice to hear a composer talking about their works.

Can I get a recording of that?

Really thought-provoking post from Nico Muhly on the difficulty many composers have acquiring recordings of their own works, and how having access to those recordings can be an extremely valuable learning experience. The discussion continues in the comment thread, and it is worth a read.

I remember a composer actually having to email me and ask me to return promo CD because he didn't have permission from the orchestra that performed one of the pieces to distribute it.

 

John Cage Quote of the Day 16

A fugue is a more complicated game; but it can be broken up by a single sound, say, from a fire engine.

from 45' for a Speaker

John Cage Quote of the Day 15

People often ask what music I prefer to hear. I enjoy the absence of music more than any other, or you could say silence. I enjoy whatever ambient sounds there are to hear. What I like is that they aren't saying anything. They just do what it is they are. I listen, no matter in what else I happen to be engaged. Experience. Not knowing what will happen next.

1988

John Cage Quote of the Day 14

The past must be invented. The future must be revised. Doing both makes what the present is.

from John Cage: Composition in Retrospect

John Cage Quote of the Day 13

I must confess that the contradiction, composing and not composing, has haunted me for a long time. Do you know the story of my relationship with psychoanalysis? It's short. It must have been around 1945. I was disturbed. Some friends advised me to seek an analyst. All the psychoanalyst was able to tell me was that thanks to him I was going to be able to produce more music, tons of music! I never went back.

From For the Birds

John Cage Quote of the Day 12

QUESTION: To repeat the question I asked a moment ago: don't you ever feel betrayed by different performances of the same piece?

J.C.: I am going to tell you a story. One day, around 1940, a musician, a pianist, phoned me to say that he was coming from South America, where he had played The Perilous Night, and he wanted me to hear it. He wanted to know what I thought about it, no matter what the cost. So, I went to his studio, and he banged out a Perilous Night that was perfectly horrible! At that moment, I would have preferred never to have written The Perilous Night! In the years that followed, when pianists came to me while my works were not yet published, I advised them especially not to play The Perilous Night. And then, by chance, in the course of a tour in the southern United States - it was at a university, I believe - another pianist said to me: 'I play your Perilous Night, and I would like you to hear it.' I replied that I did not want to. He insisted. I ended up letting myself be convinced, and I followed him to his piano. I listened. It was marvelous.

from For the Birds

Adams on Son of Chamber Symphony

John Adams talks about Son of Chamber Symphony via the London Sinfonietta's YouTube page. As a bonus, here's Stuart's great Listening Guide to Adams' original Chamber Symphony, one of Loose Filter's all-time most popular posts.

John Cage Quote of the Day 11

I don't see why a professor should have to teach his students what he already knows, or what he knows how to do. This is all the more true for teaching music. Since the professor knows how to do what he knows how to do, since he's already supposed to know the discipline he's teaching, that ought to be enough! There's no reason at all for the students to follow the same path. They shouldn't repeat, they should invent something else.

From For the Birds

John Cage Quote of the Day 10

What I appreciate about Varèse is obviously his freedom in choosing timbre. He, along with Henry Cowell, has very greatly contributed to getting us used to the idea of a limitless tonal universe. No matter how refined Schoenberg's timbres may be, they hardly ever get away from the number twelve . . . While with Varèse, whatever his 'organizational' notions may have been, you feel that everything is possible.

Nevertheless, there is still in Varèse a prejudice towards controlling sounds or noises. He tries to bend sounds to his will, to his imagination. And that is what very quickly bothered us. We knew that he wouldn't let sounds be entirely free. What we were looking for was in a way more humble: sounds, quite simply. Sounds, pure and simple.

1968

John Cage Quote of the Day 9

But enough of the contemporary musical scene; it is well known. More important is to determine what are the problems confronting the contemporary mushroom. To begin with, I propose that it should be determined which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms; whether these latter, indeed, make sounds of their own; whether the gills of certain mushrooms are employed by appropriately small-winged insects for the production of pizzicati and the tubes of the Boleti by minute burrowing ones as wind instruments; whether the spores, which in size and shape are extraordinarily various, and in number countless, do not on dropping to the earth produce gamelan-like sonorities; and finally, whether all this enterprising activity which I suspect delicately exists, could not, through technological means, be brought, amplified and magnified, into our theaters with the net result of making our entertainments more interesting.

from Music Lovers' Field Companion, 1954

John Cage Quote of the Day 8

        At all costs inspiration

must be avoided which is to say

act in such a way that inspiration

doesn't come up as an alternative

but exists eternally.

 

from 45' For A Speaker

John Cage Quote of the Day 7

Rhythm is not arithmetic. 

from 45' For A Speaker

John Cage Quote of the Day 6

i think one of the things that distinguishes music from the other arts is that music often requires other people the performance of music is a public occasion or a social occasion this brings it about that the performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society of how we want society to be though we are not now living in a society which we consider good we could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live

from I-VI (Cage's Charles Elliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1988-89)

John Cage Quote of the Day 5

Percussion music is revolution.  Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth-century music.  Today we are fighting for their emancipation.  Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom.

1939

John Cage Quote of the Day 4

I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom.  For this purpose I have recently moved to the country.  Much of my time is spent poring over "field companions" on fungi.  These I obtain at half price in second-hand bookshops, which latter are in some rare cases next door to shops selling dog-eared sheets of music, such an occurrence being greeted by me as irrefutable evidence that I am on the right track.

1954

John Cage Quote of the Day 3

"A little over ten years ago I acted as music editor for a magazine called Possibilities.  Only one issue of this magazine appeared.  However: in it, four American composers (Virgil Thomson, Edgar Varese, Ben Weber, and Alexi Haieff) answered questions put to them by twenty other composers.  My question to Varese concerned his views of the future of music.  His answer was that neither the past nor the future interested him; that his concern was with the present.

From History of Experimental Music in the United States, 1959

John Cage Quote of the Day 2

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time.  There is always something to see, something to hear.  In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.  For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible.  Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes.  I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low.  When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.  Until I die there will be sounds.  And they will continue following my death.  One need not fear about the future of music."

Excerpt from an address given at the MTNA convention in 1957.

John Cage Quote of the Day

Those of you who know me know that, for the time being, I am not earning my living as a conductor, thanks in part to California's woeful state budget.   I have strong, contradictory opinions about my situation - but not the state budget, which is simply fracked - and perhaps I'll express those later.  In the mean time I've decided to delve into the wonderfully contrarian mind of John Cage (the Terry Gilliam of American composers).  Cage was the ultimate (inside) outsider, and as I am now on the outside as well, I figure it is high time I tackle the esoteric tomes that have been waiting patiently in my library since being purchased at Half Priced Books, oh so many years ago.

So here it is, your John Cage Quote of the Day.

So it was that I gave about 1949 my Lecture on Nothing at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (the artists' club started by Robert Motherwell, which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et. al.).  This Lecture on Nothing was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.).  One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, "If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep."  Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, "John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute."  she then walked out.  Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked.  This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen.

From the Foreword to Silence; Lectures and Writings of John Cage

Puckett on Rouse and some excellent listening, too

Joel Puckett is a friend who happens to be a very gifted composer, who also writes and teaches about other people's music wonderfully.  Recently he was asked to write a guest piece for the Baltimore Sun about a recent Christopher Rouse work, and it perfectly captures that sense of discovery and delightful surprise one can have hearing new musical works for the first time.  The whole very perceptive article is here--best bit:

As we walked down 65th street, we were collectively inspired by Rouse's willingness to push his expression. It would be very easy for him to sit back and write the same piece over and over for the rest of his life. Not that any of us were surprised that he is still a growing and restless artist, it was just dazzling to come face to face with such powerful evidence.

And don't take my word for it that Joel is a terrific composer--here he is working with the U.S. Marine Band (one of the great concert ensembles in the world, truly), in a rehearsal of his piece It Perched for Vespers Nine:

 

Mr. Adams, thanks for being so real.

Loving the blog posts of John Adams.  So down to earth and down right entertaining.

If you are a fan of his music, you should definitely have this. 

His new book, Hallelujah Junction (which is on my Christmas list, wink wink), has received terrific reviews.

Björk interviews Arvo Pärt

A lovely interview, it's always interesting to hear two composers talking to each other:

Composers in their own words, pt. 8: Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo Golijov's eclectic music reflects his diverse cultural background.  He grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in Argentina, studied in Israel and in the U.S., and currently lives and teaches in Massachusetts.  Much of his music defies categorization, and like several other Loose Filter favorites, he takes inspiration from all musical quarters - concert, pop, ethnic, folk, electronic, high, low, and middle. 

Regarding the human experience:

[T]o me, the human scale is even more striking than the divine.  Many people say that Beethoven was the greatest composer.  Why?  Because we know how much he struggled, how much he yearned.  He was always striving upwards.  Whereas it seems that Mozart came down, as if he really were divine.  There seems to be no struggle. - from this interview.

• A feature from NPR on his 2003 opera Ainadamar
  • A transcript of the Listening Guide to Ainadamar 
  • Rehearsal video 
• An great interview from WGBH that also focuses on Ainadamar, and has several excerpts
• Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw discuss his 2004 song cycle Ayre ("the laptop is a folk instrument")
• Discussing composing for film 

On the modern composer's toolbox: 

Mahler lived in a differend world and he had one incredible instrument, which was the symphony orchestra, which he know better than anybody.  He was able to use it to express the entire range of human experience at that time.  In the hundred years that separate us, there was the electric guitar, jazz, rock: the world has been enlarged, and I don't think that the symphony orchestra is still able to contain the entire universe, which was Mahler's dream. 

Composers in their own words, pt. 7: Magnus Lindberg

Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg is set to become the next composer-in-residence of the NY Phil (w/ video), and has a performance at this year's Cabrillo Festival, but aside from these recent developments he hasn't received much play in America.  This succinct description from Jeremy Eichler is a good starting point: "He belongs to a generation of composers that inherited the solemn rites and rigors of post-war modernism and struggled to transform them into a personal language that could speak beyond the ivory tower."

On orchestras:

"For much of the last century, what you might call the 'critical mass' of the orchestra has tended to be dismissed as an institution belonging to the past. I don't share that view, above all because there's no real equivalent for the mental and physical energy you get from an orchestra playing at its optimum level, and creating its own collective 'sound image'."

Composers in their own words, pt. 6: Thomas Ades

When I wrote Asyla, I thought that composing music was like tuning a radio. It was as if the music was on the radio, and I could tune my brain in and find it. But now I think it's more like flying a plane - you know you need to land safely, and you need to see all the controls and the whole landscape, and if you get into stormy weather you need to keep hold of everything.

I constantly marvel at the music of Thomas Ades (pronounced Ah-des). I've been listening to Tevot while putting this post together and I'm struck by - and always am - by how romantic and colorful his music is. The piece begins with ethereal, stratospherically undulating string harmonics, then the winds and brass enter with broad Sibelian gestures that almost coalesce into a chorale, but instead pile up and bring the whole first section crashing down.

(more inside)

Composers in their own words, pt. 5: Mark-Anthony Turnage

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a bad, jazz-lovin' mofo whose music is a vast cityscape of bebop riffs, blues licks, screeches, wails, hymns, and prayers. His pieces are often scored for ensembles expanded to include instruments closely associated with the jazz tradition. This ability to meaningfully integrate vernacular elements into well-crafted music creates results both of our time and outside it.

I suppose the most influential jazz player on my writing is Miles Davis. I'm a Miles Davis geek. I love pretty much everything that he ever was involved in. I'm very lucky to have collaborated with a few of his ex-sidemen, like John Scofield and Dave Holland. I regard jazz as a major art form and I take it very seriously, and I think these players are as important as any other musicians over the last 100 years.

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Composers in their own words, pt. 4: John Luther Adams

I was hiking above Sonora Pass in the Sierra Nevadas last weekend listening to John Luther Adams' In the White Silence and, man, what a great experience.  Not to be confused with John Coolidge Adams, Alaskan JLA is considered one of America's great experimental composers.

For much of the year, the world in which I live is a vast, white canvas. In the deep stillness of the solstice, I’m profoundly moved by the exquisite colours of the subarctic winter light on snow. Reading art critic John Gage’s essay “Color As Subject,” I’m struck by a parallel between the view out my window and Mark Rothko’s use of white underneath the colours in his paintings. Like Rothko’s translucent fields, the colours on the snow suggest to me broad diatonic washes suffused with gradually changing chromatic

harmonies. Slowly, faintly, I begin to hear it: music stripped to its most essential elements—harmony and colour floating in space, suspended in what Morton Feldman called “time undisturbed.”

(more inside)

Composers in their own words, pt. 3: William Bolcom

Aptly described by Leonard Slatkin thus: "If Gershwin, Stravinsky, Bartok, Irving Berlin, Eubie Blake and Aaron Copland had all been one person, you'd get a sense of who Bill Bolcom is as a composer," here is William Bolcom, one of our great eclectics and prolific geniuses, in interviews:

From Minnesota Public Radio, a short audio program about the 2007 Illuminating Bolcom festival.

A short video interview connected with that festival.

Audio interview from Minnesota Public Radio.

A conversation on MPR about what makes Bolcom a unique composer.

(more inside!)

Composers in their own words, pt. 2: John Corigliano

John Corigliano, one of our great living composers, in interviews:

• From NewMusicBox, The Gospel According to John: At Home with John Corigliano, a great interview in six parts.

• An interview on the Naxos podcast (free download).

• On From the Top: Hall of Fame, audio of an interview and performances of several works (scroll to the bottom of the page).

(links to more performances inside)