caliarch.net

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2006/14/image/a

Awesome.

One of the most beautiful things about conservatory was that as my peers and I became older, more experienced, more sophisticated musicians, we began to take ourselves less seriously. Taking ourselves less seriously freed up part of our minds to think about every aspect of music (our own and others’) more deeply. In retrospect, I think that may be why they saved the most philosophical music theory and history classes for our last years.

During my senior year, I took a theory class on counterpoint (an incredibly broad topic that encompasses, well, basically the entire western canon). It was by far the most valuable and interesting of the theory classes I took while I was there, and one of the reasons for that was because during the second half of the course we spent so much time stripping away the pretentiousness from contemporary music and digging into what’s really going on when a composer sits down to create and notate a piece of music. We spent a lot of time at conservatory across all our classes finding ways to talk about music; it’s not as easy as you might think, especially since we were barred early-on from using statements like, “I liked it,” “It was good,” “My favorite part was…,” “The best part was when…,” “I wish s/he’d…” A lot of times I ended up borrowing textural words; I would talk about a composition being grainy or silky or splintery or thick, and after four or five years about talking about pieces with the same group of people, we started to understand what each other meant by those kinds of words. We also used to talk about the “shape” of a piece—it could have round parts, or jagged ones; it might be flat in some places or have others where the bottom falls out. Once we listened to a piece in counterpoint and the professor asked us to describe it. By that time, that was easy; “It’s a wedge,” the twenty of us proclaimed.

“Alright,” he said, “It’s a wedge. Why do you say it’s a wedge?”

The reason we described the section as wedge-like was because most of the instruments had been playing in their middle registers, and then suddenly the high instruments began working their way up into their extreme high range while the low instruments gradually dropped into their lowest range, leaving nothing in the middle.

“But why use the word wedge?”

“Because of the notation,” someone pointed out. “If you were to look at the score, you’d see the notes for the high instruments moving upward, and the notes for the low instruments moving downward. Calling it a wedge is a metaphor for the notation.”

“Okay, there’s a wedge-shape in the notation,” nodded the professor. “But is there truly a wedge in the music?”

We went round and round about that for a while, finally agreeing that there was, in fact, no wedge anywhere at all, except in the notation. Which is itself a metaphor for organized sound, for something that defies all attempts to perfectly describe it, be it spoken words or notes on a page. Calling what we were hearing a “wedge” was a metaphor for a metaphor.

To be continued….

An editorial on the war by John Kerry.  Brilliant.

“Art is the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.”

“Art is a distinctively human institution because it fulfills a vital need of human consciousness.”

“If it used to sing with Paul Simon, it’s Art.”

“What is art? 6.3 billion different things, strictly speaking.”

The whole “what is performance” thing got me thinking about minimalism again (and, quite honestly, made me more than a little nostalgic for conservatory J ). Minimalism is hard to explain to civilians because it inevitably leads to the nihilistic conversation on what constitutes art in the first place. And once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Or at least your aesthetic sensibilities.

Anyway. I spent a long time thinking about it, scoffing it, defending it, and doing it, and eventually reached what I think is a pretty reasonable understanding of the whole thing. In a way, minimalist art is liberating for the artist (at least, it has been for me). It is what it is; it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The pile of bricks on the floor is a pile of bricks on the floor. It doesn’t symbolize anything. It doesn’t stand for anything. It doesn’t try to evoke any deep and powerful emotional response.

It is not about the plight of the migrant worker.

“So what in the hell makes it art, then?” I hear you cry. Well, here’s the easy way out: According to my high school art teacher as well as my first composition teacher at conservatory, “Art is whatever activities people who call themselves artists are engaged in.” Fabulous, no? Don’t worry; I won’t burden you with my version of the long answer.

For more on minimalism, check out this article.

“What is performance? Do we need to define it or are we creating its meaning in what we’re doing? If everything is performance, then what is performance? Do we need to agree in order to go on together?”

Tonight I went to a fabulous high school dance show. Seriously—and I’ve thought about this—it was arguably the most amazing, most moving, and most thrilling thing I’ve seen all year. The energy from the kids and the audience was unbelievable. The house was packed, which I’m sure had a lot to do with it. It made me so happy to see the kids up on the stage together, just dancing together and obviously having a blast doing it.

It made me think a lot about public performance—what it is, what’s really going on sociologically, and why we do it. They aren’t new thoughts; to be honest it was something I went over dozens of times when I was doing my composition degree at conservatory. As students, teachers, composers, conductors/directors, and performers, it was something we went round and round about. I never reached a satisfactory answer, and you know something? After all this time it’s still an incredibly rich discussion.

Why were all those kids up on stage dancing their hearts out? Since it was a high school performance, we can rule out the professional angle. They weren’t doing it to support themselves. Performing in the show was not a requirement of the dance classes, either, so they weren’t doing it because they had to. Because they enjoy dancing? Maybe. But if that’s the reason, there really didn’t need to be a performance per se; if that was truly the reason, they could have derived just as much benefit from dancing up in the dance room with nobody watching. As someone who has been a performance musician, there is definitely something about having an audience in front of you that changes the experience. You don’t get the same thing out of a dress rehearsal.

Maybe the reason we perform is because we want to show others what we have accomplished. We want to share with them what we’ve done, what we’ve worked hard to create and bring to life. We want others to offer a summary judgment: “Wow, that was really good (music/acting/dancing/singing/ playing/whatever).

More on this later.

Why go to performances? Entertainment? Emotional stimulation (thrills, chills, and spills)? Mental and/or psychological stimulation? Well, that all depends on who you ask, I suppose. There was a contingent at conservatory who firmly believed that if it wasn’t “pretty,” it wasn’t music. At least not good music. There are certainly people who feel the same way about any kind of performance. If it’s not “entertaining,” it’s not a good or valuable performance.

In all honesty, much of that particular discussion (though it is a very rich and interesting one) doesn’t really pertain to the high school dance show since the majority of the audience was made up of the families and friends of the dancers. Yeah, they were probably entertained, but that’s not why they were there. Their reason for attending the show was primarily social.

Yikes, this is getting long, and beginning to meander. I’ll have to think about it more and come back to it later.