department zed | ramblings from the great white north

A while ago I’d written a response to Glenn Branca’s the 25 Questions—a blog post asking 25 hypothetical questions about the state of modern music. A new comment prodded my memory (in that I had not finished my responses), so I figured I’d take a few minutes now to respond to the rest of his questions.

11. Can the music that sooths the savage beast be savage?

I think this is possible but I also think it’s unlikely; in many ways this is walking a tightrope

12. Should a composer speak with the voice of his or her own time?

Honestly I think this is really a personal question for the composer; a composer can choose whatever idiom he or she deems appropriate for their art. I would, however, suggest that we as an audience should not simply dismiss a work out of hand simply because a composer chose to write using a voice of, say, the past.

13. If there’s already so much good music to listen to what’s the point of more composers writing more music?

My attitude towards this is simple: because we can, and because new music can be just as “good” as old music. There is nothing wrong with new ideas being introduced into the discourse.

14. If Bach were alive today would he be writing in the baroque style?

Probably a better question for a musicologist, but off the top of my head I would guess that he would not be writing in a baroque style, but still working with highly contrapuntal techniques.

15. Must all modern composers reject the past, a la John Cage or Milton Babbitt’s “Who Cares If You Listen?”

I don’t think so. Tearing the entire structure down and rebuilding it based on new ideas is always a noble undertaking but at the same time we should never ignore what has come before; my feeling is that we should always build a future informed by the past but not dictated by it.

16. Is the symphony an antiquated idea or is it, like the novel in literature, still a viable long form of music?

I think it is viable if and only if the composer writing it makes it viable. Just because it is an old idea doesn’t make it a bad one, but at the same time I don’t see the point in recreating Brahm’s Symphony no. 4 (as an example).

17. Can harmony be non-linear?

Does it matter?

18. Was Cage’s “4:33″ a good piece of music?

I think it was a good piece of art in that it questioned the underlying assumptions of what comprises a musical performance. Whether or not I’d consider that “music” is another question entirely.

19. Artists are expected to accept criticism, should critics be expected to accept it as well?

Absolutely. Everyone practicing an art or craft should be willing to accept criticism; without that, there’s frequently no impetus to think or improve.

20. Sometimes I’m tempted to talk about the role that corporate culture plays in the sale and distribution of illegal drugs throughout the United States and the world, and that the opium crop in Afghanistan has increased by 86 percent since the American occupation, and the fact that there are 126,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, but what does this have to do with music?

Nothing, except that it might shed light on certain compositional choices you make in the music you write when you talk about these things. Societal pressures always have an impact on the art we create, whether we want it to or not.

21. Can the orchestra be replaced by increasingly sophisticated computer-sampling programs and recording techniques, at least as far as recordings are concerned?

Speaking as one composer that has used these techniques, I would say “yes” with qualifications. Just like any other tool (particularly computer-based tools), there is a definite trend of the tool shaping the work. Using samplers can be great but often you end up writing your music based on the limitations of the programs, and while this has been the case with any performance medium the limitations of many programs are much more obvious than, say, the limitations of a specific performer.

22. When a visual artist can sell a one-of-a-kind work for hundreds of thousands of dollars and anyone on the internet can have a composer’s work for nothing, how is a composer going to survive? And does it matter?

I don’t have an answer for this question. There are other ways of surviving, such as making a living based on commissions, teaching and live performance but this does nothing to address the implications of the question.

23. Should composers try to reflect in their music the truth of their natures and the visions of their dreams whether or not this music appeals to a wide audience?

I would say that that’s the choice of the composer, and might be related to the previous question; if a composer finds that they can survive by writing, say, New Age music—even though their nature tends to be say, serialist—that’s a choice they have every right to make.

24. Why are advances in science and technology not paralleled by advances in music theory and compositional technique?

I think there’s three reasons or explanations I’d make here: science and technology advances tend to have a much shorter “lifespan” from conception to acceptance; theory and compositional technique development are much more ambiguous and abstract than most technology; and often the type of person developing said techniques are not “in sync” with technological advances.

I will leave #25 to the imagination of the reader