Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Glenn Gould: Fifty Years of Solitude

Thursday, April 10th, 2014

Fifty years ago today, April 10, 1964, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould gave his last public performance.

Sometime around twenty years ago, I discovered Glenn Gould, first through Evan Eisenberg’s book The Recording Angel, and later, and more importantly, through Francois Girard’s film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which my father and I went to see at the Drexel Theatre in Columbus on its first release, sometime in late 1993 or early 1994.  Coincidentally, I’ve been showing this film to my music appreciation students this week.  I love it for my own reasons, of course, but I love the way it (and Gould’s story) portrays the eternal triangle of composer-performer-audience, and shows that this triangle is perhaps not as eternal as we once thought it.

I also love that it’s a grown-up movie.  It isn’t a romantic comedy, and there are no explosions, which right away make it very different from what my students are accustomed to seeing.  On the other hand, the movie’s structure as a set of short vignettes, no more than about five minutes long each, is perfect for the way that many of them have encountered media–through YouTube clips, Vine videos, and the like.  It deals with genius, with the plans our parents set into motion for us, with what an intelligent person does when he can no longer tolerate the path of his life, it deals with the consequences of personal decisions, and it deals with death.  And it’s funny.  Very funny, on a couple of occasions.

But more importantly, trying to explain Gould to my students every semester makes me rethink why he was so important to me in the first place.  So here’s what I have this time around.

In 1993 and 1994, I was excited about going to college, and I didn’t only consider going as a music major.  I prepared my own audition repertoire, and when I took auditions, I hadn’t had a regular private trombone teacher in two years.  I practiced, and I played, and I began to study music theory.  I had some experience on piano to fall back upon, and I had started to compose a little.  I would eventually complete a trombone concerto as my senior thesis, without much guidance other than my own reading and listening.  It wasn’t particularly good, and I wasn’t a standout candidate for conservatory.  I’m still amazed that Tony Chipurn took me into his studio at CCM because I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of my technique, although I was just fine in theory and history classes.

It has been said that it is a mistake to make a career of music if one has other options, and I certainly did.  If I had really understood the differences in the educational approaches of different schools, I might have made a very different decision.  I also might have made a very different decision if I hadn’t known about Glenn Gould.

I learned about Glenn Gould the man before I ever heard Glenn Gould the pianist.  What struck me was his personality, both as displayed in Girard’s film and in Otto Friederich’s Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations.  A musician, yes, but a true intellectual.  A man of staggering intellect.  And a man whose personality seemed to fit my own–exacting, idealistic, introverted, yet brilliant (I thought quite a bit of myself), uncompromising (at eighteen, I hadn’t had much to compromise over).  Seeing a potential future self in Gould, I could begin to see a future as a musician.  Composer?  Perhaps.  Band director?  If necessary.  I’m not completely sure what I wanted from my years at CCM when I got there, except to immerse myself in this musical world and somehow come out transfigured, shining-faced, prepared to be audacious, brilliant, uncompromising.

Almost the first thing I did on arriving in Cincinnati was find my way to the listening center in the music library, and have the attendant–Ben Rydell–put on Gould’s 1955 Goldberg Variations.  My first hearing, the first music I heard as a college student.  Even though it is the 1981 recording of that piece that I have played again and again after finally receiving it for Christmas that year, the notes of Gould’s breakthrough record were what bracketed my time in college.  My idea of what Bach could be was transformed, of course, and when I took piano lessons with Dianna Anderson, I drove her nuts trying to play Bach the way Gould did, but it was more than that.  I genuinely attempted to channel Gould, in my young, awkward, deliberately boisterous way, at once musical, literary, philosophical.  Those who were there may remember some of it, the heart-on-the-sleeve, Young Werther-type who walked around Cincinnati that year, reveling in the freedom to simply be a student of music, to keep my own hours, to determine for myself just how much solitude I needed (perhaps it was because my birth cohort is relatively small, but it seemed that there were any number of places for a person to be alone on that campus).

What does Gould mean for my students, then?  I wish I could get them to think more deeply about it–they aren’t always in that habit.  I think that Gould is the precursor of the postmodern performer–after all, he quit performing three years before the Beatles did.  There are any number of popular music stars today, particularly in techno and EDM, who only give lip service to the idea of public performance.  Is playing a set of recorded music a public performance?  Not in any kind of traditional sense, but I think Glenn Gould would have appreciated it.  While “artists” (and my students use this word more frequently than “musician” to describe musical performers) may appear before the public, many do not truly perform their music before the public, preferring to lip synch instead.  YouTube is filled with mashups–the result of the public doing just what Gould imagined–creating performances out of existing material.  In a sense, we have arrived at Gould’s future.

The world of Glenn Gould recedes from us a little more each year–I noticed this particularly on this week’s viewing’s of Thirty Two Short Films, with its typewriters, phone booths, and newspaper stock prices.  In 1993, only ten years on, things were not so different–after all, Gould’s second reading of the Goldberg Variations was recorded digitally and released on CD.  Now I find myself explaining some of the technology to the students, alongside with the idea that a man might then (as now) devote his entire life to performing the music of someone else.  This in particular baffles my students, who think of a “song”  (always a song) as being linked with a specific performer rather than a composer or songwriter.  I try to imagine what Gould and his producers were doing–making the first recordings which have withstood the test of time and changes of medium, and I see that if it hadn’t been Gould to quit the stage, it would have been someone.

And yet, the man fascinates me, and I think will continue to do so until I am older than he was at his death when I was only six years old.

Congratulations on fifty years of solitude, Mr. Gould.

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Software Worries and Creative Comfort

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Like many composers, I rely (rather heavily) on a computer notation program to do the heavy lifting required when revising, editing and polishing my music, and also to create individual parts from scores.  The program I have used for the last decade, Sibelius, recently came out with a new version, the first since the company founded by the original designers of the software was bought out by a larger firm, Avid.  A perhaps-ill-conceived post on facebook (I try not to be negative on facebook) has led me to an exchange of concerns about the upgrade with Jesse Ayers, a fellow composer on the faculty of Malone College in Canton, Ohio.  Jesse and I had met previously at conferences but hadn’t really gotten to know each other, but somehow I found myself sending this rather personal email, and I’d like to make it an open letter:  It started out being about Sibelius and ends up being about my art and my understanding of myself.

Dear Jesse,

The linked divisi parts is a problem, and I have never liked the methods for inputing piano pedalling… I’ve suggested a solution for that, but it hasn’t been adopted yet.  Of course, I’ve learned to deal with both, and countless other quirks (so much so that I’m always surprised how many things I don’t even think about when I have to help my composition and orchestration students make their scores look presentable).  I dread the thought of changing to another program, but at some point, I’m sure that Sibelius will have run its course and we’ll all be switching over to the next thing. 

I’m at a funny age–people a few years older than me have a devil of a time with anything to do with computers, but people a few years younger than me never knew anything different–my first year of college was the same year the World Wide Web debuted; I didn’t know what email was my first term, but by Christmas, I couldn’t live without it.  In composition, it’s the same: Sibelius has become a second language to me, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to compose a major piece without it, but folks just a few years older than me completed their master’s theses in manuscript.  My first experience with notation software was with Encore on Macintosh in the early 90s, and I took away the notion that it was more trouble than it was worth and spent several years learning to write manuscript, which I think, in the end, was good experience, but after I graduated from college and got my first computer, it wasn’t long before I wanted a notation program.  I fiddled around with NoteWorthy composer for a while, and was able to make some readable but pretty cruddy-looking scores.  In late 1998, though, Sibelius came out, and I was one of the first thousand people in the US to buy it.  I read the manual cover-to-cover (a much more reasonable proposition then!) and dove in.  I was teaching middle school band at the time, and having a terrible time of it… so bad that I was looking at law schools, but having an outlet in my arranging and composition probably saved me for music (for better or for worse!). 

Sibelius is probably the reason that I’m a composer, although I’m loathe to admit that to anyone.  Just as I wouldn’t have even attempted to write the book I just finished without a word processor, I couldn’t possibly have become serious about composing without help from the computer.  I don’t think I lean on it too much–I do more sitting at the piano than I used to, especially for vocal music–but even if the first draft of a piece is manuscript, the second draft is in Sibelius.  If it goes away or changes into some unrecognizable form, I’m at the point now where I will do what needs to be done, but I will miss it terribly.  As psychopathic as it sounds, its interface has been the most constant thing in my life over the last ten years as I went through divorce, job changes, graduate school, a second marriage, too many out-of-town moves.  I would miss it like I would a friend–more than some people I have called “friend,” even.  Don’t think I’m strange about this–perhaps you understand what I’m saying–Shakespeare would miss The Globe, Bill Clinton misses the White House, a blinded astronomer misses her observatory.  Sibelius is where I work, and where what I think of as my most meaningful work of the last decade was accomplished (I hope that my students find and found my teaching meaningful, but it isn’t meaningful to me in the same way that my art is meaningful).  I was already worried by the buyout, and yesterday my worries proved correct: I’m accustomed to working with people who view Sibelius the same way I do–as a friend, as a key component of their work.  I’m sure there is some of that at Avid, but Sibelius is not their creation, not in spirit.  I worry that it will become like a superficial film adaptation of a great novel. 

Sometimes I worry about stupid things, I guess.  But this is the problem that we all face as artists in the 21st century: the means and methods by which we create our art are continually shifting around us.  For all his “agony and ecstasy,” Michaelangelo knew that marble was marble and would respond to his chisel in reasonably predictable ways.  Changing Sibelius too drastically would be like substituting a new, better, synthetic marble and still expecting David to appear.  Perhaps this is what his “agony and ecstasy” were about–the Sistine Ceiling is a masterpiece, but the powers that be forced Michaelangelo to work in a way that was more or less foreign to him.  The result was stunning, of course, but a wrenching experience for the artist.

You caught me after band rehearsal, so I apologize for waxing philosophical… someone gets this email just about every week lately!  I’m going to head home to my wife now.  I believe this is going to become a blog post.

Best,

Matt

 

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Response to Bob Specter

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Thanks for reading, Bob.

Your Mahler addiction is long-known, certainly understandable and more-or-less incurable.  Typically, on the first day of music theory class, I reiterate to my students (I say “re”-iterate, because they should have heard it somewhere before) that music is perceived and understood by humans in three basic ways (perhaps more, but three that we can really agree on).  All humans (hopefully) experience music on an emotional level–emotion really is what keeps us coming back to it, having arguments about it, flipping the CD back to that same track again and again (the last movement of Mahler 2, right?).  I think that anyone except the most profoundly mentally handicapped person feels music on an emotional level; not being able to perceive music emotionally is, to me, a profound mental handicap.

Then there is a physical understanding of music.  This is perhaps best expressed in dance, at least in its pure state, but without a physical understanding of music, it would be impossible to play an instrument, or sing with a group of people.  Musicians and non-musicians alike spend years trying to master the physical implications of music, from marching in step, to dancing at your own wedding, to performing a concerto or an aria at Carnegie Hall.

Then there is the way to understand music that people with university degrees in music tend to emphasize, and around which our system of music education is (supposedly) constructed–the intellectual approach.  This approach begins when we stop just reading music and begin to look for the very abstract patterns in the sound and in the notation and vocabulart that describes it–key signatures, open sevenths, sonata form, fugal expositions and the rest.

Of course these approaches overlap, and there is much gross oversimplification in my three ways to understand music.  It ignores cultural considerations like the social function of music and economic considerations like the profit motive.  But I would argue that most performers and listeners actively engage one of these three modes when dealing with a piece of music.

In teaching music theory, I occasionally hear from students that pulling a piece of music apart to see what makes it tick–identifying all the Roman numerals–takes all the fun out of it.  This, of course, isn’t the point.  We teach music theory because after a certain point, if we are to talk about, think about and delve deeply into music, we must establish a common vocabulary, and we must understand what makes Beethoven different from Mahler or Marenzio or Mendelssohn.  All four of these composers may make us feel the same way (or not), on the emotional and physical level, but intellectually, they have great differences–a fact which is obvious from even the first hearing of their music.

So–to address your question–how is the listener (or performer) who is not trained in the intellectual understanding of music deal with the technological changes being wrought on the musical world by mp3s, easy access to recording technology and the rest?

First, this is only the next step in an experiment we have been running since the development of the phonograph and grammophone.  What happens when average people gain steadily more and more access to higher- and higher-quality recorded music?  Where even five years ago most of us were at the mercy of the record companies, the Internet has made such a deluge of music available to us (both free and for a price, both legal and pirated) that no one can possibly hear it all, let alone become an expert.  It has gotten to the point where I feel, as someone with a doctorate in music, that I can’t even scratch the surface of what is out there.  My solution has been, mostly, to hide behind a “canon” of western music, and to dig deeply into that music, while hearing whatever contemporary music I can.  All the music in the world is there, but that doesn’t make Beethoven or Mahler any less great.

Second, my hope is that the availability of home recording, and access to the Internet, can do what it seems to be doing–making the means of production available to many more.  It has always been difficult to make a living from music, but few people actually stop playing music because of that.  It just becomes their hobby.  I know many medical doctors, lawyers, executives and the rest who are fine musicians–one of the best violinists I know is an optometrist–but not everyone can have that career in music.  The beauty is that there is still plenty to be had from music when it is an avocation.  More and more people seem to be realizing this, and are learning guitar, singing in their church choir, or dusting off that old saxophone and joining a community band.

Third, a certain number of people will never go toward the intellectual undertstanding of music needed to read notation or master an instrument (these are not mutually inclusive, of course).  They will continue to be surrounded by music–this apparently doesn’t bother most people the way it bothers me, perhaps because they don’t think about all the music they hear.  I, on the other hand, can’t ignore the canned music in the airport, the mall, the restaurant… my intellectual training won’t let me.  Those who merely “appreciate” music will be able to do as they have always done, only now with more choices than ever.  With a little luck, the difference will be like broadcast TV of the 1970s when compared to cable or satellite TV of the mid-2000s.  While I hate to admit it, I think TV has actually gotten better–more varied, more nuanced, perhaps even smarter.

While the record “industry” seems to be in trouble (probably just being superseded the way the sheet music industry was to a large extent after 1930 or so; I would expect that commercial recordings will always be there in some form), I think the real endangered species is silence.  Look at the money people pay for quiet cars and noise-cancelling headphones:  someone or something is always imposing on the ear.   Does that answer the question?

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Reaction: The Cult of the Amateur

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

I just finished reading Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur.  An indictment of what I’m doing right this second, of course.  I may have all of my students read his section on the music business.  Keen discusses Tower Records, and I remember well going to their Atlanta store in about 1995 or 1996, and having the feeling that if there was a recording I wanted, they had it, or they could get it.  It was the last place I ever saw new LPs on sale, too.  Now, I couldn’t even tell you where the nearest good record store could be found (though I did pick up a used copy of a CD of solo piano music by Charles Wuorinen and Morton Feldman at the Hastings store in Liberal).  I order from Amazon, CDBaby, and Archiv, none of which is as much fun or as satisfying as some of the fantastic record stores (and music departments of bookstores) I’ve frequented over the years (the highlights–Barnes & Noble at Easton Towne Centre and Borders on Henderson Road in Columbus, Joseph-Beth Bookseller in Cincinnati, Tower Records in Atlanta, Used Kids and Magnolia Thunderpussy in Columbus, Streetside Records in Cincinnati) .  The BMG Classical record club has shrunk its monthly selection of classical music to four pages in an omnibus catalog–an insult, really, although as I get older there is more music that I already own, so it gets tougher to please me.

More to the point–I would respond to Keen by saying that, while the surge of technological music-copying has been disastrous for the “record industry,” it has been a boon for the “average” musician.  I would remind Keen that his precious “music industry” has–put simply–conned much of society into believing that you need a record contract and a team of professionals to make music.  For the past fifty years, Americans have been letting others make their music for them, and I see that changing now. 

Any public school music teacher or church music minister can tell you that musical talent is spread around fairly thickly.  There are many who can sing or play well enough to entertain themselves and those around them, or to use their musical skills in worship, and it doesn’t require a college degree or a big break.  It appears that the public is starting to once again recognize this. 

I never understand the person who comes to me after hearing me play or after listening to one of my pieces saying, “that’s amazing, I could never do that.”  Those people are selling themselves short.  The human mind is a flexible, resourceful thing, and it can learn to do nearly anything, given time and motivation.  I don’t believe that anyone is musically hopeless, but the music industry wants us to believe that we are.  No more!  Any teenager who has played with Garage Band for ten minutes can create a decent sounding song… not strikingly original, but an indicator of a strongly developed sense of musical taste.    To paraphrase one of my professors, Gregory Proctor, if you ask the mechanic down at the garage to come up with a song, he can do it… maybe not a good song, but a conventional song that fits the musical culture he has been steeped in.  We now hear more music than ever–it surrounds us, and compared to our ancestors, we are all probably musical geniuses.

To the end though, because it’s late, and there isn’t that much point in inflating the blogosphere with my midnight musings.  In the realm of music, technology has the potential to remake folk music–where Keen sees billions of self-taught musicians condemned to anonymity, I see the nameless, shapeless forces of true folk music, building a common culture on the backs of unremembered musical mediocrities.  Where today my students don’t have four folk songs in common, perhaps Web 2.0 will allow the culture of personal, meaningful music to be restored to the vast millions who don’t have record deals.  I don’t know what technology means for music–especially for my music.  I hope it means more live music, more amateur music and a greater importance in our culture for music as an activity that enriches the lives of those who participate.

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